THE Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in collaboration with Guybernet and Regional Community Development Groups in Berbice, Demerara and Essequibo successfully executed a data collection and clean-up activity along the shorelines and waterways of Guyana’s Coast.

The activity took place at No. 63 Beach and Rose Hall Beach in Berbice; Kingston, Uitvlugt and Cornelia Ida in Demerara; and, Dartmouth and Charity on the Essequibo Coast.

The clean-up activity was extended for the first time to all three Counties as part of a public awareness strategy being implemented by the EPA. The exercise evolved from the International Coastal Clean-Up (ICC), an international environmental observance scheduled for the third Saturday of September each year.

The Clean-up in different Coastal Regions is intended to become an annual event that is expected to gain momentum with extended reach and support in the future.

In Guyana, like other countries around the world, marine litter is a growing threat to the marine and coastal environment.

In addition, it poses economic, health and aesthetic problems, severely affects wildlife, and threatens the integrity of Guyana’s coastal and marine ecosystems. Understanding the problem and the factors that contribute to marine litter and participating in such activities to combat the problem will equip Guyanese with the tools necessary to reduce and eventually eliminate the problem.

Marine litter, often called marine debris, is any man-made, solid material that does not decompose easily, which has been disposed of or left in the marine and coastal environment and results in a continuous build-up of litter. There are a wide variety of materials that contribute to marine pollution including plastics (fragments, sheets, bags, containers); polystyrene (cups, packaging, buoys); rubber (gloves, boots, tyres); and, wood (construction timbers, pallets, fragments of both).

In an attempt to combat this problem, the Government of Guyana through the Environmental Protection Agency partnered with the United Nations Environment Programme-Caribbean Regional Coordinating Unit (UNEP-CAR/RCU) to undertake an Assessment of Marine Litter Management in Guyana with the ultimate aim of developing a Strategy for the Management of Marine Litter (the Guyana Project). This strategy will pilot the implementation of the UNEP Regional Seas/CAR/RCU project for the implementation of the Draft Regional Action Plan for Marine Litter, the EPA said in a statement.

Marine litter data collected from this exercise will be submitted to the Ocean Conservancy, United States via Guybernet, and will be used to guide actions and policy decisions on the issue of marine litter globally.