I recently heard the CEO of Jamaica Environment Trust (JET) Diana McCaulay on radio. Commenting on the proliferation of garbage (strewn liberally from one end of the island to the other) she observed: “It’s almost like ‘Jamaica Land We Hate’ – not ‘Land We Love.’ Indeed, if we claim to love Jamaica so much, our chests swelling proudly as we sing the National Anthem, then why do we damage and destroy this beautiful land? Why deface it with trash?
Nuh Dutty Up Jamaica! (Image from Jamaica Environment Trust/Facebook)
“Dutty” garbage – and our nasty habit of throwing it wherever we feel like, for someone else to clear up – is the focus of JET’s “Nuh Dutty Up Jamaica” campaign. A public education initiative aimed at changing people’s behavior is always challenging; it doesn’t happen overnight. But this program points to the individual Jamaican’s responsibility for keeping his surroundings decent and clean. Not just his/her yard, you understand; it’s quite likely that is clean and tidy anyway. But the spaces we share: the beaches, streets, schools, shopping plazas, parks, football fields, and so on. The campaign complements the Clean Coasts Programme, launched in August 2014 – a partnership between the Ministry of Tourism’s Tourism Enhancement Fund (TEF) and JET that aims to clean our tourist areas, on land and underwater. But please – please – let us think about the “non-tourist” areas of Jamaica, too.
Last week, JET also presented the findings of last year’s International Coastal Clean Up Day in Jamaica, which had unprecedented support. Over 7,000 volunteers cleaned up 100 miles of coastline, with the north coast parish of St. Mary coming out on top with fifteen registered cleanup sites. The Coastal Clean Up is an exercise in retrieving waste (mostly plastic) from our beaches – the last chance, the last frontier before it all goes back into the sea. Because everything that we throw away on this little island eventually makes its way down to the sea, sooner or later. Just before the Clean Up Day last year, a group of us circled Kingston Harbour by boat, from Port Royal and back again. It was a shock. Apart from the obvious, stinking pollution of the water, which made some of us nauseous, the amount of solid waste – including, even, computer monitors – was terrifying.
Where did it all come from? How did it get there? How did we get so nasty? We asked each other at the time, but we couldn’t answer that last question.
Garbage washed down from gullies and clogging Kingston Harbour. (My photo)
“Nuh Dutty Up Jamaica” is not a clean-up campaign, McCaulay stresses – that is the difference. It is proactive rather than reactive, aiming to teach (and remind) Jamaicans to dispose of their garbage properly. Let us change our dirty habits! A young man whom I know quite well, the irrepressible Russhaine “Dutty” Berry, creator of the humorous and highly successful “Dutty Berry Show” on social media, is the “Ambassador” for the program (that was a no-brainer, really) and I know he will do a great job. Take a look at his video, which made us laugh ourselves silly (I especially like his goat impersonation): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOKC3-tkKGc
(l-r) Thalia Lyn, CEO of Island Grill, Minister of Tourism Wykham McNeill, JET’s CEO Diana McCaulay and Diane Ashton Smith of Diageo chat at the launch. (Photo: JET/Facebook)
Minister of Tourism Dr. Wykeham McNeill is enthusiastic about the project; he know it makes sense from his Ministry’s perspective. The Ministry has funded the Clean Coasts Programme (which is a one-year pilot, hopefully to be extended) in full. The Tourism Enhancement Fund has also given J$350 million to the National Solid Waste Management Agency, he pointed out; these funds come from contributions to airline tickets bought outside Jamaica. He commended TEF Chairman Senator Noel Sloley as a “driving force” behind the programme. Good for them!
The private sector came on board, too. Island Grill CEO Thalia Lyn was there to talk about her (truly Jamaican) fast food company’s new Earth Friendly Box. Diane Ashton Smith from Diageo/Red Stripe was there to pledge her firm’s support through branding bins, running ads and social media promotions. Agricultural Chemicals handed over one of their large branded bins (I hope they will be emptied regularly) to be distributed island wide. And since it’s nearly that time again in Jamaica, Bacchanal Jamaica will also be promoting the program during Carnival events. This kind of support is commendable. Let’s have even more.
Russhaine “Dutty” Berry in deep conversation with moderator Paula Ann Porter Jones before the start of the “Nuh Dutty Up Jamaica” launch. (My photo)
We often talk about inner-city areas (where there is often no garbage collection at all, not even a skip to put one’s waste in) and decry the residents’ filthy habits, throwing their rubbish into gullies, etc. But don’t be fooled. Uptown Jamaicans are just as bad – and they don’t have the valid excuse of no proper services. They have their garbage collected. Down the road from our house lives a well-known “big man.” He has a nice big house. Manicured lawns, swaying palm trees, beautifully swept driveway. And yet, a foot or two from his grand front gate is a pile of rotting food and household waste, spilling from a plastic bag that has been dragged down the road by street dogs or a hungry homeless person. It stinks. Flies and mosquitoes breed in it.
Would this pillar of society want to have this bag of filth on his lawn? No, of course not. But it is on the sidewalk, so those sweating, dirty garbage collectors who rattle down our street once a week can scoop it up. Meanwhile, he drives in and out of his gate in his very nice clean car without a second glance. Sometimes, our neighbors might send out a helper or a gardener to tidy up the sidewalk in front of their houses. Sometimes. They would never do it themselves. It’s for someone else to deal with. They are not touching it. Not their responsibility.
This attitude – uptown, downtown, seaside, mountainside, wherever – has got to change. As someone commented last week, “It is not about morality or ethics, but our very survival.”
