Pavi­t­ra Ramharack

Over the week­end, there was a sport­ing com­pe­ti­tion at a pub­lic sport­ing com­plex/park where I usu­al­ly walk on ear­ly morn­ings or af­ter­noons. As I was dri­ving by, I could see the stands filled with cheer­ing peo­ple and count­less oth­ers on the foot­ball field, where the com­pe­ti­tion was un­der­way. I was pleased to see the space ac­tu­al­ly be­ing used, giv­en the con­sid­er­able sums that were spent to fix and up­grade it sev­er­al years ago.

The next morn­ing, I vis­it­ed the area just be­fore sun­rise for an ear­ly morn­ing walk. As I was walk­ing up to the walk­ing track, the area ap­peared rel­a­tive­ly clean and I was im­me­di­ate­ly pleased that ei­ther the par­tic­i­pants, host or lo­cal gov­ern­ment had done an ex­cel­lent job with the post-event clean-up cam­paign. How­ev­er, once on the walk­ing track it­self, I re­alised that was not so. Now, for clar­i­ty, while I have said walk­ing track, the area I walk on is ac­tu­al­ly a prop­er well-built and es­tab­lished cy­cling track, which is used by the res­i­dents as a pop­u­lar area for ear­ly morn­ing and late af­ter­noon ex­er­cise.

My usu­al walk­ing area was filled with dis­card­ed por­tions of fries and oth­er food­stuff. There were scat­tered greasy bags which were filled with some form of liq­uid and even bits of food. Cou­pled with this were ran­dom bits of wrap­ping and even old laces and bits of cloth. None of these be­ing items that are usu­al­ly on the oth­er­wise clear track, so, I had to be­lieve it was rem­nants from the event held the day be­fore. It meant that while try­ing to main­tain a con­sis­tent walk­ing pace, I had to be care­ful to side­step the food and bits of trash, as I didn’t want to step on any­thing and ei­ther skid or track the mess it would cre­ate all over the track or even back to my car.

It isn’t un­usu­al af­ter events or even on any giv­en day to see Trin­bag­o­ni­ans eas­i­ly dis­card their waste on the roads, bush­es, rivers, or ba­si­cal­ly any­where that is not a trash can or ap­proved dis­pos­al area. It’s an un­be­com­ing habit that not on­ly takes away from peo­ple’s abil­i­ty to en­joy their sur­round­ings, but one that can al­so lead to pol­lu­tion and the trans­mis­sion of dis­ease.

There are many peo­ple who would nat­u­ral­ly be­lieve that the bits of food, or fruit, or any­thing that may be biodegrad­able, are not con­sid­ered lit­ter. So, if my half-eat­en ap­ple falls to the ground, well then, that’s al­right, it will turn in­to com­post even­tu­al­ly.

The Lit­ter Act de­fines lit­ter as “any sol­id or liq­uid ma­te­r­i­al or prod­uct or com­bi­na­tion of sol­id or liq­uid ma­te­ri­als or prod­ucts in­clud­ing but not lim­it­ed to any bot­tles, tins, logs, saw­dust, derelict ve­hi­cles, car­tons, pack­ages, pack­ing ma­te­ri­als, pa­per, glass, food, an­i­mal re­mains, garbage, de­bris, sand, grav­el, stone, ag­gre­gate, dirt, waste (in­clud­ing any hu­man and an­i­mal waste) or any oth­er refuse or rub­bish or waste ma­te­r­i­al, and any oth­er ma­te­r­i­al or prod­uct that is des­ig­nat­ed as lit­ter by the Min­is­ter by no­tice pub­lished in the Gazette.”

The de­f­i­n­i­tion clear­ly doesn’t dis­tin­guish be­tween dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories of lit­ter, so that, lit­ter en­com­pass­es a wide range of items, in­clu­sive of items which peo­ple be­lieve should be ex­pect­ed.

There are many pub­lic events that teach us, or sim­ply re­mind us that Trin­bag­o­ni­ans can­not be trust­ed to keep their spaces clean. The streets af­ter Car­ni­val, recre­ation­al grounds af­ter var­i­ous shows, and the rivers af­ter busy week­ends are all ev­i­dence of our in­abil­i­ty to sim­ply pick up af­ter our­selves. In the cas­es of big­ger pub­lic events, there are var­i­ous agen­cies or per­son­nel re­tained to car­ry out im­me­di­ate clean-up works, but with re­spect to our small­er events and tourist at­trac­tions, there are very feel peo­ple hired to come pick up or clean up af­ter peo­ple.

This park, in par­tic­u­lar, while it is open for pub­lic use, I am sure a cer­tain amount of per­mis­sion is re­quired for host­ing events. This per­mis­sion more than like­ly would ei­ther have to come from the lo­cal body au­thor­i­ty or per­haps even the Min­istry of Sports. It made me won­der whether any agree­ment be­tween the par­ties would have re­quired a de­posit for clean­ing pur­pos­es or a re­quire­ment that the area be cleaned. If a de­posit was re­quired, then who was ac­tu­al­ly check­ing to en­sure the area was suf­fi­cient­ly clean and ready for all its reg­u­lar users the next day?

While walk­ing, I re­flect­ed on the mon­ey spent to up­grade the fa­cil­i­ty so that the pub­lic could have a prop­er, safe and well-lit fa­cil­i­ty to en­joy. I al­so laughed when I thought to my­self, and this is why we can nev­er have nice things, as soon as we have some­thing new and prop­er to use, we come along and de­stroy it. We ei­ther de­face, lit­ter, dam­age or abuse. Some­how, in us­ing pub­lic fa­cil­i­ties, we for­get that we may wish to use it an­oth­er day and in­stead of car­ing for it, we de­stroy it.

As adults, we shouldn’t need a piece of leg­is­la­tion that tells us not to lit­ter and to pick up af­ter our­selves. We should be more cog­nizant of our sur­round­ings and make every at­tempt to keep the ar­eas we use clean. Lit­ter­ing should not be a top­ic we still dis­cuss in these mod­ern times, yet, here we are still re­mind­ing peo­ple of the need to stop lit­ter­ing.

Pavi­t­ra Ramharack is head of Cham­bers at Pavi­t­ra Ramharack At­tor­neys at Law and can be reached at ramharack_pavi­t­ra@out­look.com