CHIEF executive officer of the Jamaica Environment Trust (JET) Dr Theresa Rodriguez-Moodie is expressing concern about the amount of the country’s coastline volunteers have access to clean each year.

Speaking at the media launch of International Coastal Clean-up (ICC) Day 2026 on Wednesday, Rodriguez-Moodie pointed out that while last year’s operations engaged 124 coordinated groups to conduct 170 clean-ups — removing 77,090 pounds of garbage islandwide — they covered only 120 miles of coastline compared to 272.31 miles in 2024.

“This is a decrease in the amount of coastline and a part of that is because there are some beaches that are no longer accessible to the public but, you know, the fact is we were still able to remove a lot of waste that could have entered the marine environment and caused even more harm,” she said.

Rodriguez-Moodie said the issue caused concern among volunteers, many of whom reported that they were unable to access beaches they usually cleaned, prompting her to reach out to government stakeholders in anticipation of this year’s staging to plan how best to remedy the issue.

“It is something that we had raised as a concern last year when several of our site coordinators were calling us to say, ‘hey, we can’t access some of the beaches that we normally clean up.’ So what we did this year was we had a stakeholder meeting with our government partners and we spoke about this concern,” she said.

The environmentalist shared that they have received commitment from agencies like the Urban Development Corporation to help where it can, and assured that volunteers would proceed with clean-ups to the best of their abilities.

“We’re going to see how best we can work it out, essentially, because they are aware of the concerns with access. But if the beach is under management, then site coordinators will essentially still have to seek permission to clean up the beach. We’re trying to make the issue a little smoother or the access issues a little less this year because we’ve had these discussions,” she said.

Rodriguez-Moodie further highlighted that accessibility issues existed beyond management barriers, pointing out that some coastlines were not cleaned due to their remote locations.

RODRIGUEZ-MOODIE…the beach clean-up is not just about removing the waste…it directly translates to the impact it has on the ecosystems 

She expressed hope that through greater collaboration from private entities, more of those areas will become accessible.

“We have a lot of site coordinators in Kingston and St Andrew and also towards the west. But we need to have other sections of the coastline cleaned up as well. Access in that case is not necessarily because it’s private, but it’s access because it’s remote. More funding might be needed.

“So we’re also looking for more of the private sector to come on board to support more community groups. And we’ve been reaching out to different organisations with the hope that they can also support us in that way,” she said.

Despite the reduction in coastline miles cleaned, the JET head also highlighted the positive impact that the initiative has had on Jamaica’s environment and marine life, underscoring the importance of public participation in protecting the island’s coastal ecosystems.

“The beach clean-up is not just about removing the waste. That’s important, as we have explained, because of the Wildlife Impact Calculator can actually directly translate that to the impact on the impact that it has on the ecosystems. But it is also very important from the perspective of we get more volunteers [and] we get that involvement from people.

“We have actually seen companies, large corporations, come out to clean-ups and light bulbs go off, and we see how they have translated what they’ve seen to policy change in their own organisations to, ‘all right, we’re going to reduce the amounts of plastic’. So this is a kind of action that we want to see. It’s not just about ‘I have done my one good deed for the year’. It’s about seeing how organisations, groups, individuals can come out to this event, see the impact of our use of products and the waste that it generates,” she said.

ICC Day 2026 has been scheduled for September 19, with registration to become a site coordinator ending on July 27, while registration for JET’s flagship clean-up in the Palisadoes Port Royal Protected Area will run from August 17 to August 28, or until full capacity is reached.