Yes­ter­day, for the ob­ser­vance of In­ter­na­tion­al Coastal Cleanup Day 2019, small armies of vol­un­teers col­lect­ed tonnes of garbage that had been pol­lut­ing beach­es and ma­jor wa­ter­ways across the coun­try. These ef­forts are mak­ing a dif­fer­ence but will on­ly be of min­i­mal ef­fect un­less there are more wide­spread and sus­tained ef­forts to erad­i­cate coastal pol­lu­tion.

This an­nu­al ex­er­cise of col­lect­ing and doc­u­ment­ing the trash lit­ter­ing T&T’s coast­line demon­strates the size of the waste prob­lem in this coun­try. Be­yond try­ing to iden­ti­fy and deal with the sources of garbage foul­ing up our oceans and rivers, it is time to change the be­hav­iours that have put us in this mess.

This is not on­ly a threat to hu­man health and wildlife but could have some se­vere eco­nom­ic con­se­quences if cur­rent trends are not re­versed.

The degra­da­tion of Cha­cachacare, a once beau­ti­ful is­land that is grad­u­al­ly be­ing tak­en over by piles of garbage is on­ly one ex­am­ple of out of con­trol beach pol­lu­tion.

The mounds and mounds of garbage over the is­land have been turn­ing off vis­i­tors. Tour op­er­a­tors are re­luc­tant to list it as a tourist at­trac­tion.

Con­tribut­ing to the prob­lem are rev­ellers from par­ty boats and day-trip­pers who drop garbage all over the is­land. In ad­di­tion, the many over­flow­ing bins are sel­dom, if ever, emp­tied at all.

At Cha­cachacare and oth­er lo­ca­tions, the garbage left be­hind by beach­go­ers is on­ly part of the prob­lem. There is al­so pol­lut­ed runoff, as well as un­treat­ed sewage re­leased in­to the ocean. Waste from live­stock is an­oth­er ma­jor source of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of wa­ter­ways.

T&T al­so gen­er­ates huge amounts of plas­tic waste—no need for a re­port from an in­ter­na­tion­al agency to con­firm that fact.

Of ma­jor con­cern is that lo­cal­ly there have been no re­al ef­forts to deal with this threat to ma­rine life. When plas­tics break down in the oceans around our is­lands, they be­come mi­croplas­tics, which fish and hu­mans in­ad­ver­tent­ly con­sume.

Not on­ly that, bad weath­er caus­es a rise in ocean waves and cur­rents, which de­posit more garbage in our coastal ar­eas.

T&T’s abil­i­ty to de­ci­sive­ly ad­dress these prob­lems is ham­pered by the small amount of ef­forts and re­sources that are be­ing chan­nelled in­to cleanups and pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sure. The fact that en­vi­ron­men­tal mat­ters are on­ly one area of fo­cus on a larg­er Plan­ning Min­istry sug­gests that it is not a ma­jor pri­or­i­ty for the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment.

How­ev­er, the stark re­al­i­ty of this prob­lem can be seen all around this coun­try. Just try to find one pris­tine, un­pol­lut­ed beach, or any wa­ter­course, for that mat­ter, that is free from garbage.

In these cir­cum­stances, a once-a-year cleanup bare­ly scratch­es the sur­face. T&T isn’t work­ing hard enough to change this sit­u­a­tion. It is time to bring on bans on sin­gle-use plas­tics. Beach cleanup pro­grammes have to take place through the year, along with ed­u­ca­tion cam­paigns to raise aware­ness among cit­i­zens