Editorial | Trash City!

It’s 2020 and Jamaica has still not found a way to efficiently and effectively manage its waste. Recent images of garbage piled high at the Coronation Market tell an eloquent tale of our poor attempts at waste management. This look is replicated in many of urban centres from time to time.

The mountains of decomposing garbage and other waste seen in the downtown market district recently does more than attract vermin and release toxic gases into the atmosphere. It is the preface for a public health disaster at a time when there is national nervousness around the rapidly spreading coronavirus and other diseases that pose a threat to the population.

Back in the day, people would bury garbage which was then largely biodegradable. Others burnt their waste; a dangerous practice that pollutes the air and which still persists. With today’s complex mix of materials, waste disposal demands a scientific approach.

Regular garbage collection is vital to ensure a clean environment and to maintain sustainable communities. The responsibility for solid waste collection and disposal rest with the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA). But, says the head of the SWMA, Audley Gordon, we are not responsible for the markets. According to him, that job falls to the municipal corporation.

This sounds to us like duplication of effort between these two entities. Presumably, the NSWMA is equipped to carry out waste management duties. It has the personnel and the expertise to undertake logistic planning. Why would the municipal corporation be engaged in waste management when there is an agency equipped to do this job?

According to Mr Gordon, the truck operated by the municipal corporation is on the brink, which gives a hint that the body is not adequately suited to do this job. And speaking of garbage trucks, many of them can be seen lumbering along the streets of the capital, held together by sheer magic, signalling that they have outlived their useful lives and are fit to be discarded.

So the truck is not operational for several weeks and the garbage is just allowed to rot at the feet of market vendors? It is really disappointing that alternative arrangements were not made by the municipality and that it should take an outcry from vendors, weeks later, to draw attention to the situation. Mayor Delroy Williams should make this his priority as the weekend market shopping gets into full swing today.

DIRECT IMPACT ON SOCIETY

Regular removal of garbage and proper disposal of waste have a direct impact on the society. It is estimated that the average human being generates four pounds of trash every day. So trash is being constantly generated. We have to rely on professional waste management to remove this trash and the harmful substances it generates from the environment, to make it safe for all citizens. Indeed, the Ministry of Health & Wellness, through its public health inspectors, should have insisted that the situation be corrected a long time ago.

The Ministry of Tourism, too, should be interested in how solid waste is treated, for to have mounds of trash and the stench of rotting garbage at a food market is a blight on the people that have to sell there, and uncomfortable for the buyers, including visitors.

It is not lost on us that waste management has many challenges but without the proper infrastructure in place to collect and dispose of waste, people will continue to dump garbage on the streets, in gullies and streams.

Further, it will take a combination of public policy, education and change of mindset to undertake an aggressive recycling and compositing programme for the island. We believe it can be done in the same way in which the Government has sought to drive behaviour by banning environmentally hazardous materials such as single-use plastic and Styrofoam.