HUNDREDS of young people joined hands early Saturday morning to clean parts of Guyana’s coast as part of the International Coastal Clean-up, which took aim at eliminating trash-littered coastlines.

The massive clean-up began just after 06:00hrs on Saturday, as the sun was creeping in and lasted until about 09:00hrs. Persons came out in their numbers at the Kingston and Kitty seawalls to support the effort.

For National Coordinator for Caribbean Youth Environment Network (CYEN), Guyana Kiefer Jackson, “It’s not just picking up garbage for us, it’s also about recording what we pick up and at the end of the day, we submit a report to Ocean Conservancy so that they know what’s out here.”

Ocean Conservancy is a non-profit environmental advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., United States and is one of the few organisations that help to protect wildlife in the ocean.

Through this report submitted to the group, Jackson related that CYEN and other organisations targeting better environmental practices in Guyana are able to formulate better strategies to combat that environmental problem.

And this clean-up has been ongoing– through the Caribbean network– for 25 years in the Region and for the past five years in Guyana. During the clean-up, groups not only filled garbage bags with waste, but also simultaneously documented the type and amount of trash collected. The bags were also weighed.

With this strategy, the coordinator said: “At the end of the day, we can say to Guyanese that this is the waste being thrown away on your beach and [by using] the information presented, we try to devise strategies to alleviate the problems out here.”

A key component of this exercise is to share information with others, particularly the younger generation, according to Jackson. She also posited that good environmental practices, such as not littering and keeping the oceans free of waste, should be inculcated from the youngest age possible.

Adding to the clean-up exercise, Jackson also highlighted the harm being caused by the use and improper disposal of plastics. This is a worldwide problem, since plastic is a widely used product, but it is also non-biodegradable and stays in the biosphere for a long, long time. As such, World Environment Day 2018, celebrated on June 5, was structured around ‘beating’ plastic pollution.

And in fighting the war against plastic pollution, Jackson shared that the government’s decision to ban single-use plastics by 2021 is a good initiative.

“I think it’s a great start to get to where we need to be,” the young woman shared. She also explained that during Saturday’s clean-up, one garbage bag could be filled with close to 200 plastic bottles weighing about nine pounds.

For her, “That’s the problem that we have, at this point as we are moving to a greener Guyana, we shouldn’t be faced with such large amounts of debris of plastic.”

The event was hosted in collaboration with the Department of Environment, Ministry of the Presidency and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Another clean-up will be held next week at the No.63 Beach, Berbice.