Gov’t Pursuing Development of Policy for Mandatory Plastic Waste Separation and Recycling

The Government has announced plans to mandate plastic separation and recycling by all ministries, departments, agencies and statutory bodies as part of the management of solid waste.

Addressing the opening of a new recycling plant by Recycling Partners of Jamaica at Naggo Head, Portmore, St. Catherine, on Thursday (December 14), Prime Minister, the Most Hon. Andrew Holness, said legislation will be developed and brought to Parliament to support the new policy.

“It is important that the work being done here is supported by the public effort of being responsible in the management and disposal of waste. The Government can aid in this, and we will aid in this. We will be making a special budgetary allocation for a public education campaign to support the proper disposal of waste, in particular plastics, and that will be very much a line item in the next Budget,” the Prime Minister said.

He said further details of the initiative will be announced prior to its implementation.

“I had announced it before, so it’s not new; so, people would have had time. We have actually done all the work internally to implement it. But we will start the implementation at the beginning of the next fiscal year because there might be some budgetary allocations necessary.

“Persons would have to acquire new garbage bins for separation. They would have to identify spaces in their entities, and so forth. So that is a definitive action that the Government will take as a step towards a national regulatory platform for the separation of waste, particularly for the identification and proper sequestration of plastics,” Mr. Holness said.

He advised that several pilot waste separation projects have been implemented in various communities with support from the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF), World Bank, and the Japanese Government, among other partners.

Mr. Holness said the policy for the separation of waste and recycling of plastics in public entities follows previous programmes by the Government, such as the ban on single-use plastic.

“This is not new for us in terms of taking these kinds of steps. Remember, we are probably still one of the few countries in the region to have put a ban on single-use plastics. Someone said to me, ‘You know, Prime Minister, that hasn’t helped because I’m still seeing waste’. But if you look at the profile of the waste, it has changed.

“This initiative that we’re going to do next will, again, change the profile of the waste. But I’m certain it will have an impact on the volume of waste, for which the Recycling Partners would be more interested in as a metric of progress,” he stated.