An island-wide cleanup campaign, which was held last week Thursday, generated some 800 tonnes of waste as of Sunday, Health and Environment Minister, Dr. Kenneth Darroux has revealed.
The campaign was held to rid the island of potential breeding sites for the Aedes Aegypti mosquito in light of the Zika Virus, which has been sweeping the region.
In a ‘thank you’ address to the nation, Darroux described the campaign as successful.
“As of Sunday evening, I’ve been informed a total of 400 truckloads, amounting to 800 tonnes of waste material, most of which would have been potential breeding sites for the Aedes Aegypti mosquito, would have been brought to the Fond Cole landfill and this by itself should speak to the success of this undertaking,” he stated.
He said the success of the campaign should not negate the need for the continued effort to reduce “mosquito source reduction in a sustainable way.”
“We continue to implore and encourage all citizens to manage their waste responsibly to prevent the incidence of vector-borne diseases,” Darroux stated.
He also said the support and response of citizens of truckers around the island were overwhelming.
“The support and response of the citizens and prompt and efficient service by the various truckers around the island was overwhelming and as Minister responsible for Health and Environment, I am comforted and encouraged that the clarion call towards good and responsible behaviour by our citizens was heeded by so many people and this is indeed commendable, because as we have said many times before that the government cannot do it alone, we need everyone to be on board,” he noted.
The campaign held under the theme, “Stop Mosquito Breeding Today, Keep Zika Away.”
In Bequia (St Vincent) a scheme was started to both recycle and ship scrap to Trinidad for recycling – http://www.actionbequia.org/garbagerecycling.php
The pictures above do us no good when it comes to a positive image for tourism or “nature”. It’s time to see positive projects to recycle and see this “waste” converted to something useful rather than just land fill it and give our children another environmental disaster to deal with.
What a dump. It shows how trashed this island is by the people that live here. There needs to be a restriction on a lot of unnecessary packaging. 100 yrs. ago was better at the rate things are going now.
Wow! That is a lot of waste, 800 tons and 400 trucks? Only a tip of the iceberg?
You answered the call, worked very hard with enthusiasm. You are to be commended.
Note when everyone put their heads, hands and feet together how much good could be accomplished. Keep it up!
There are non-profit charitable organizations in the US and Canada who would love those old vehicles. They sell them, the parts to raise funds to feed the hungry and others who are in need of.
I also heard through the US Catholic Radio they also accept old shoes; everything possible that people throw away. They have volunteers who will refurbish them and sell them. This one has also asked for old used vehicles.
Throughout the year the poor people of Buffalo, NY are fed tons of food.
What is trash could become useful. It is said, the poor benefit from the rich. I also say, the well-to-do.
The St. Vincent de Paul Society and other Catholic organizations also perform these godly acts.
All these metals should not be going into our land field because it will have an effect on our water system, rivers, and the nature island. Can we use the boat of OJ to have the old vehicles crush and ship out to the USA/China or wherever we can get the market. That’s just an idea!
I should point out that when we lived in Dominica I complained to DOMLEC about the littering done by its employees on on the job. And was simply ignored.
Cleanup might help the floundering tourism industry, which is Dominica’s only real economic savior. Dominica is supposed to be the “Nature Island” but the populace does not act as if they believe that. A genuine cleanup – and maintaining it – will raise Dominica’s rankings in cruise ship passenger surveys and thus cause those shipe to return and even come in greater numbers.
Anyone caught littering should be required to do some serious cleanup service.
Put the jail population to work.
too many old cars, they should make the owners pay to get rid of them.
What they could do is put a sticker on them with a notice to the owner giv ing them a limited time to dispose of it and if they don’t compl removeove the vehicle to the dump and charge them for the service. That procedure works very well in most developed count
tries. Hit them where it hurts, in their pocket.
All this waste can be used to generate electricity and recycling of material for remanufacturing purposes .
wow
Now time to clean up the landfill. This should be done on a regular basis, not for the sake of mosquitoes but for our sake.
800 tons minus the members of Parliament, supporters etc LMAO
And there is still a lot of trash on the roadside
Hmph!
From the third photograph shown it looks like the land-fill itself is a breeding ground for the Zika virus. The roadways should be paved instead of this muddy mess.
This is not going to do anything.
Dominicans have become a very nasty and untidy set of people these days. Two days after the clean up campaign in my community, it was KFC box by there, Busta bottles and beer bottles by there in the drains.
Cleanliness is no longer in our psyche.
You said “Dominicans”. You are implying that every Dominican is the same. This would also include you. However, you are wrong. “Some” people in Dominica are not clean and are untidy ; not all of them.
we seriously need a scrap metal yard in Dominica, more than that the machine that crushes the scrap metal, so we can export the scrap metal overseas where there is a market for scrap metal $$$$
Derp, good idea. However, unfortunately , like the toilet paper manufacturer is is a question of economies of scale. The equipment for handling, sorting, cutting/compacting this sort of waste is very expensive and probably not cost-effective for our small island, especially bearing in mind the high cost of electricity. But, more important right now is that the global markets for raw materials, particularly iron ore are so depressed that it is cheaper for manufacturers to melt from ore rather than use waste scrap. This is a huge problem right now and there are yards all over the U.S. that are unable to ship to overseas markets, particularly the Far East that were lucrative as little as 18 months ago. We may well find that we have to pay someone to take this waste away from Dominica.
We have scrap metal yard in River estate and very messy and unhealthy it is too. The residents have been fighting that and trying to get it removed from there for years but court seems to fail them and playing Pontius Pilate. yes Sir, we like hoarding mess and contaminate the environment right there in Simeons patch. It have another mess in his backyard, where the Playing field used to be, right next to Canefield airport. I bet that is contaminated also but anyway not a pretty picture for visitors landing at that airport. long live Nature Island!
This demonstrates the need for a regular collection service for this kind of waste, say every six weeks, so that we do not end up with an overwhelming task like we see now, which is difficult to manage.
But more importantly, it will contribute to keeping Dominica clean and reduce the opportunities for insects and vermin to breed.