Dear Editor,

Hurricane Melissa carved its name into Jamaica’s western coast with a force that felt ancient and new all at once — like a storm summoned from old folklore yet sharpened by the bite of a changing climate.

According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), more than 4.8 million tonnes of debris now cling to the island’s battered settlements, enough to fill 480,000 truckloads and drown roads, rivers, and livelihoods in a sea of broken homes and scattered remains.

In some communities, destruction surged to nearly 90 per cent, a sweeping erasure of spaces that once held laughter, cooking fires, and everyday routines. Yet buried within these mountains of debris are less visible fragments, tiny shards carried by wind and flood water.

Melissa did not scatter only wood and concrete, but also layers of plastic, microplastic, and nanoplastic residues that seep silently into soil and sea. Each particle whispers a truth: Storms do not merely break landscapes, they amplify what we have already placed in their path.

Long before Melissa’s ruin spread across western Jamaica, the island had already earned an unwanted second birth name. Environmental advocates declared the nation the “Land of wood, water, and plastic bottles”, a lament that echoes through CEO at Jamaica Environment Trust Theresa Rodriguez-Moodie’s calls for urgent reform.

Despite bans beginning in 2019 and expanding into 2025, plastic bottles remain Jamaica’s most commonly collected waste item. Clean-ups organised across the island pull up the same story each year: Piles of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles outnumber natural debris.

And though Jamaica recently prohibited single-use plastic food containers, completing a long-awaited stage of its national campaign, the nation remains tangled in a net woven by convenience culture and limited alternatives. Private businesses struggle to replace familiar containers, and while bamboo and recycled paper emerge as hopeful contenders, scaling these require innovation, investment, and time.

Meanwhile, microplastics in personal-care products slip past the strongest laws that guard our shores. With each rainfall and storm surge, these particles drift into rivers and settle into coastal waters, forming invisible islands that grow with every tide. Hurricanes like Melissa are becoming slow, savage, and stubborn, lingering over warm seas and unleashing heavier rains as global temperatures inch higher.

Atmospheric scientists warn that warmer oceans now offer storms more energy for rapid intensification; steering winds have weakened and can no longer push hurricanes away from coastlines with the predictability of decades past. Melissa intensified while nearly standing still, a rare behaviour that scientists believe will soon become familiar.

These slower-moving storms wring out more rainfall, drag more storm surge inland, and scour more debris from roadsides, gullies, and dumps into the waterways that feed Jamaica’s fisheries and drinking supplies. When plastic bottles, bags, microbeads, and nanoplastic particles flow through flooded communities, they do not simply travel; they multiply. They break apart under pressure, dissolving into flecks too small to see but large enough to enter the lungs of fish and the bloodstream of humans. Studies abroad have already shown troubling levels of microplastics in freshwater systems, and laser-based research has detected up to 240,000 nanoplastic particles per litre in bottled water, hinting at dangers that storms like Melissa can worsen.

As hurricanes intensify, so does the invisible storm of plastic within our environment. Climate scientists at Imperial College London have concluded that climate change made a storm like Melissa four times more likely, shifting its return period from an improbable 1 in 8,100 years to a far more alarming 1 in 1,700 years. Sea surface temperatures, now higher than historic averages, added around two per cent more wind speed to Melissa’s swirling core.

This may seem small, but in hurricane physics, such numbers can mean the difference between broken trees and shattered communities. The storm’s destruction totalled an estimated $US 7.7 billion in damaged infrastructure, an amount equal to 40 per cent of Jamaica’s gross domestic product (GDP).

These numbers, grim as they are, represent more than economic collapse. They reflect the new age Jamaica is entering, when warmer seas and unpredictable atmospheric patterns promise storms that carry more debris, more pollution, and far more plastic into every nook of our ecosystems.

Climate change is no longer an abstract warning; it is a weight felt in every flooded street, every broken shoreline, and every plastic shard mixed into the island’s soil. Jamaica stands today at a crossroads where disaster recovery meets environmental responsibility. The debris that Melissa scattered will take months to clear, yet the microplastics and nanoplastics it spread will linger for generations unless the nation shifts fully towards sustainable alternatives.

The ban on single-use food containers is a milestone, but unfinished work remains. Personal-care products with microbeads continue to slip through regulatory gaps and public awareness campaigns must stretch wider to reach schools, businesses, and rural communities.

National Environment and Planning Agency’s (NEPA) education efforts, stronger enforcement under the Natural Resources Conservation Authority (NRCA) Act, and partnerships with innovators offer promising anchors. Meanwhile, calls for pre-emptive legislation echo through the halls of Parliament, urging Jamaica to embrace solutions before microplastics overwhelm waterways.

Bamboo packaging, biodegradable materials, and circular recycling programmes must not be temporary nods to sustainability but core pillars of a new economy. The road is long, but a plastic-free horizon glimmers ahead.

Jamaica’s journey through wood, water, storms, and sorrow can still lead to renewal if bold steps are taken now, while the tide is turning.

Horatio Deer

horatiodeer2357@gmail.com