The Scourge of Litter and Burning Plastic

[rastagirl777]

Sunray, this is nothing new, sadly. Still - I have been living in Negril part-time for the past 10 years, traveling here for 30 and I have found that the litter situation on the West End has been improving steadily over the years. In our neighborhood there is much less trash being burned year to year. Still - it does happen....especially in the outlying areas. Sunday seems to be a popular day, lol. We were riding back through Mango Hall/Orange Hill, etc. one Sunday and there were trash burns it seems in every other yard back there. We dubbed it the "Burning Sh*t Sunday".

Seriously though - old habits die hard. When I first started coming to Jamaica and for years still you couldn't get a drink in a plastic bottle and a box meal was in a cardboard box. The bottles were worth money and turned in - and the box left on the ground to disintegrate.

In more recent years everything is in bottles and the box meals came in styrofoam boxes. If all one ever knew was to throw their trash on the ground, that's what they did. Plastic bottles aren't worth money so they are trash. Styrofoam does not disintegrate. And its all trash so it gets burned.

Pepsi has dumped a lot of money into the island - hey, it's Pepsi Rebel Salute now - but I sure wish they would do something about their plastic bottles. Dump some money into a recycle/reuse/manufacturing operation. On the upside I'm seeing lots of stores, bars and restaurants are now carrying Pepsi and other soft drinks in glass bottles again - so when I order one, I request they give me the glass bottle. The soda actually does taste better!

Each one teach one - its going to end up being a generational thing. I find the kids I know are pretty aware of environmental pollution. They don't throw their trash on the ground, they are concious about that. When you think that 50 years ago it was common place to chuck a bottle out of a moving car window in the states - there is hope.