KINGSTON, Jamaica — Corporate entities, schools and individual volunteers joined hands on Saturday to participate in a major coastal cleanup along the Kingston Harbour.

Speaking with Observer Online, chief executive officer of the Grace Kennedy Foundation, Caroline Mahfood praised the Great Mangrove Cleanup initiative noting a significant reduction of plastic along the harbour since the last clean-up in September.

“When I walk through the mangroves this time, there is an inner path in the mangrove. When I did it in September, I was tripping over plastic. It’s completely clear still so it’s just the outside beach that is full of plastics that we’re cleaning out today,” Mahfood said, adding that not a lot of plastics were in the water either.

The reduction in waste along the harbour, she attributed to the placement of barriers.

“We have barriers upon seven gullies right now, the seven most polluted gullies inside the inner Harbour and what we are doing here is we’re trying to clean up all the residual waste that has been on the coastline before the barriers went up so we’re hoping that after this clean up we should see a serious reduction on what is coming across to these mangroves,” Mahfood explained.

She continued, “I think a lot of the waste that we are seeing here is because the Mountain View gully barrier did not go up until the end of November and we had rains, so a lot of waste came across during that time but there is definitely a significant change.”

The Great Mangrove Cleanup is organised by the Kingston Harbour Clean Up Project which is aimed at reducing waste going into the Kingston Harbour.

Mayor of Kingston, Andrew Swaby and the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation also participated in the clean-up.