Theresa Rodriguez-Moodie | Away is a real place

"Throw it away."

It is a phrase we use every day without much thought. We tell our children to throw their garbage away. We put it out for collection and trust that it will be taken away. We finish a drink, toss the bottle on the side of the road, and move on with our lives.

But where exactly is "away"?

Over the past few years, I have spent time helping to clean up Refuge Cay, a small mangrove island within the Palisadoes-Port Royal Protected Area in Kingston Harbour. What I have learned there is that away is not an abstract concept. Away is a real place. Sometimes it is a gully. Sometimes it is a beach, and sometimes it is a mangrove island where decades of discarded waste have become trapped among the roots of a fragile ecosystem.

Refuge Cay is a nursery and feeding ground for snapper, snook, shrimp, oysters, and lobsters. Like mangrove ecosystems across Jamaica, it supports biodiversity, fisheries, and provides protection from storm surge. Yet for years, it has also served another purpose: a destination for our waste. Plastic bottles, food containers, shopping bags, and fragments of packaging are woven through the mangrove roots. Larger items such as refrigerators, toilets, and tyres have also found their way there. Nobody lives on Refuge Cay. Nobody shops there. Nobody takes their household garbage there. Yet the waste keeps arriving.

In 2018, a major clean-up removed more than 8,000 bags of waste from the cay along with refrigerators, cooking cylinders, washing machines, and tyres. Since 2023, the Jamaica Environment Trust and its partners, including the University of the West Indies’ Port Royal Marine Lab and fishers from Port Royal, have removed tens of thousands of pounds more. Most recently, support from the National Conservation Trust Fund of Jamaica has allowed this work to continue.

The clean-ups have shown that recovery is possible. Areas once covered by compacted plastic are beginning to function more naturally again. Water flows more freely through parts of the mangrove forest. In some places, where plastic once formed a thick layer over the ground, our boots now sink into mud instead.

The work, however, has also reinforced an uncomfortable truth: no matter how much waste we remove, more continues to arrive. This is happening even with efforts to trap waste in gullies before it reaches the harbour. It is happening despite repeated clean-ups. It is happening despite Jamaica’s phased ban on certain single-use plastic products.

THE LIMITS OF CLEAN-UPS

Refuge Cay shows the limits of how we deal with waste today.

Too often, we focus on what happens after waste is created. We talk about collection schedules, waste disposal site capacity, illegal dumping, and clean-up activities. These are important issues, but they deal with the result of the problem, not the cause. Far less attention is paid to how much waste we are creating in the first place.

The truth is that Jamaica cannot clean its way out of its solid-waste and plastic-pollution crisis.

Every year, more plastic packaging, disposable containers, and other short-lived products enter the market. Many are used for only minutes before becoming waste. Even the most efficient collection systems struggle when confronted with a growing stream of materials designed to be discarded almost immediately.

The challenge became even clearer after Hurricane Melissa. The storm generated about three years’ worth of Jamaica’s normal garbage in just a few days. Roads were covered with debris, and disposal systems were overwhelmed in just a few days. As the climate crisis increases the frequency and intensity of these events, Jamaica must prepare not only for the waste we generate every day but also for sudden large amounts of waste after disasters.

FROM WASTE MANAGEMENT TO WASTE PREVENTION

That is why the conversation must shift from waste management to waste prevention.

Individuals certainly have a role to play. We can reduce our use of single-use plastics, choose reusable alternatives, and dispose of waste responsibly. Individual actions alone, however, cannot solve a problem that is built into the way products are designed, packaged, and distributed. Businesses must also be part of the solution.

One approach that deserves serious consideration is Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). Under EPR, companies that make or import products must take responsibility for them at the end of their life. This creates strong incentives to cut unnecessary packaging, improve product design and invest in systems that recover and recycle materials instead of sending them to landfills. Countries like Germany, South Korea, and South Africa show that well-designed EPR systems can boost recycling rates, reduce landfill dependence, and attract private investment in modern waste management.

Jamaica seems to be already exploring options in this area, and that discussion should continue with urgency. If companies share responsibility for the waste they create, the burden does not fall solely on taxpayers, local authorities, and community groups doing clean-ups.

Government also has a key role. Strong and predictable regulations, enforcement and sanctions, incentives for innovation, investments in waste reduction and public education, and continued efforts to reduce problematic plastic products can help create the conditions for meaningful change. The goal should not only be better waste management but less waste overall.

THE LESSON OF REFUGE CAY

Refuge Cay is recovering. Slowly, but it is recovering. Clean-ups are still needed. The question now is whether we are willing to learn the lesson it offers.

Every bottle, wrapper, and plastic container that reaches Refuge Cay began its journey somewhere else. Someone used it, threw it away, and assumed that it had gone away. But ‘away’ is often a mangrove forest or a coral reef or other marine ecosystem struggling to survive beneath the weight of our convenience.

Theresa Rodriguez-Moodie is an environmental scientist and chief executive officer of the Jamaica Environment Trust. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.