A GROUP of youths have taken matters into their own hands to rid a sizeable portion of the Vreed-en-Hoop mangrove forest of yards of plastic bottles and garbage that had piled up over the years, due to littering.

The littered area is located near the Guyana Power and Light Company (GPL) power station at the Vreed-en-Hoop stelling. There, thousands of plastic bottles, now browned by the mud, have accumulated after being dumped in the waterway, often out of river taxis.

The young people began their activity on Friday, but were only able to clear a portion of the pile. They plan to return on Sunday, with even more support, so that the mangroves in the area can thrive and Guyanese can learn from their example about the dangers of littering.

The Guyana Chronicle reached out to 22-year-old biology student at the University of Guyana, Kevin Somwaru, who told the newspaper more about the motivation behind the initiative.

“When we saw it, [myself and] two of my friends from a project they were working on called Green Thumb Creatives, we decided that we were going to clean the area up. So, we posted on social media to highlight that there’s an issue and that if anyone wanted to come they should feel free. We had lots of young people reaching out and saying ‘hey we want to help’,” Somwaru was pleased to note.

Persons came on board from the Eco-Trust Society, the University of Guyana Biology Club, the WE Movement, Green Thumb Creatives. There were also several individuals from the area.

Somwaru said that the garbage pile-up is so great that it would probably take a month’s effort to clean up, depending on how many are willing to assist.

“The entire idea behind it is to rally towards a more environmentally-friendly Guyana; to have people think more about conservation, about their environment. This is especially important because plastics are really, really destructive to mangroves and our marine species and that specific area is a mangrove forest and, if we have garbage accumulating there it will cause the mangroves to die out and eventually exposing our coastline which will lead to erosion and potential flooding in the future,” the biology student informed the public.

As the youths pick up the plastic bottles and place them in large garbage bags, the aim isn’t just to dump them at a landfill but to recycle them, perhaps with Guyana’s new Eco 2000 Batch Mix Asphalt Plant. The state-of-the-art machinery can use plastic bags and bottles, as well as used tires to pave roads.

As the team works, they also adhere to the COVID-19 guidelines and are inviting other Guyanese to come on board as many hands can see the clean-up activities being completed much sooner than expected. He promotes the ‘we see it, we snap it and we fix it’ mentality as, through his experience, utilising social media to create awareness and a will for activism has its benefits.

Somwaru said: “We are the future so we might as well have the mindset from now. I say ‘We see it, we snap it and we fix it’. When you see an issue, you snap it because with social media if you post something, you find that persons who share the same view or persons who want to get on board will come together, and then you’ll have a following and an influence to get it fixed.”