6,000 plastic bottles removed from Old Harbour Bay fishing beach

The exercise forms part of a global effort to mark International Coastal Cleanup Day to raise public awareness regarding the importance of a clean environment.

Here in Jamaica several environmental and civic groups join hands and hearts for this common cause celebrated on September 17 this year.

On the weekend that just ended, the Lions Club of Old Harbour led a group of 30 volunteers who descended on the island’s largest fishing village and removed tonnes of garbage from the shoreline.

Ricardo Wray is the president of the Lions Club of Old Harbour. He told Old Harbour News that the fishing village was chosen given its significant role in the economy and social structures of the general area.

“We did a site visit and we looked at both the fishing beach and the bathing beach. And when we did the comparison to determine which would have been most effective and which cleanup would have benefited the community more, the fishing beach came out on top because the work was there to be done. It really, needed a cleaning,” he said.

According to the recently appointed Lions president, more than 72 bags of garbage were collected at the end of the three-hour cleanup drive.

He noted that most of the solid waste removed from the coastline was plastic bottles.

“We gather six or almost seven thousand [plastic bottles] in the collection process this morning,” said Wray who took over the reins of the civic body in July of this year. “I remember one group alone, and we did it groups of four, came and tell me ‘Lion President we are now at 1,000 bottles’. So you can imagine the other groups, they would have been close to that number too. And we had about seven or eight groups of four moving about the beach collecting bottles; and it was never-ending.”

Lesson learnt
It was quite a taxing task yet an accomplishment that was very fulfilling for the group of volunteers who gave their invaluable time for a worthy cause. For Wray, there are a lot of lessons learnt after facing the scorching Saturday morning sunshine.

“A lot of us can do more in terms of taking care of our environment. I think we can do better in terms of our garbage disposal. That area is a very popular area. As I said before [persons] from all over Old Harbour and the nearby environs they come to that area to get their fish and we can do a lot better in terms of how we handle the garbage,” he said while calling for the installation of recycle bins to “collect plastic bottles only” and for stakeholders to partner more with the communities.