ST JAMES, Jamaica – The National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) is encouraging Jamaicans to adopt a culture of composting and recycling to reduce the amount of waste being produced.

“We want to push composting because depending on the statistics you chose to look at, anywhere between 67 to 75 per cent of what we currently load on to a truck, at huge taxpayers’ expense to take to a disposal site is composting,” said Executive Director of the NSWMA, Audley Gordon.

“If we can get the composting culture going we would need less trucks, we would need less acreage for disposal facilities, and by the time we get to some recycling and take out the recyclables, we would be down to literally nothing, so we could be heading to zero waste [if] we are able to change the culture of our people,” he added.

However, Gordon acknowledged that the attitude towards waste disposal will not change overnight and will require patience and the right communication tools to effect change.

He was speaking at a meeting with the Negril Chamber of Commerce held at the Negril Community Centre in Westmoreland on December 8, where he provided information on the NSWMA’s ‘Sweep Initiative’ which aims to improve garbage collection across the island.

The executive director also challenged citizens to reduce their waste during the festive season.

“Instead of buying the gift you must wrap, buy the gift bag, and put [the gift] in it. You reuse the gift bag; the person who gets that gift can take it out [and] use that same gift bag. You are having a function, instead of buying disposable plates, buy the reusable plates. In doing those little things, you would have been saving the environment a whole heap of garbage,” he said.

While in the parish, Gordon also attended the meeting of the Westmoreland Municipal Corporation where he informed that the parish was among the first to benefit from the Sweep Initiative.

To this end, the backlog of waste from sections of Westmoreland Western has been cleared. In addition, areas in Westmoreland Central and Westmoreland Eastern also benefited from the initiative.

The NSWMA recently acquired 50 new trucks, of which 12 were allocated to Western Parks and Markets Waste Management Limited, which covers the parishes of Westmoreland, St. James, Trelawny and Hanover.

Three of the trucks will be assigned to Westmorland. This will be in addition to the three older NSWMA trucks and four supplementary trucks in the parish.