Agent Sasco Confident Jamaica’s Littering Problems Can Be Fixed
Order of Distinction awardee and brand ambassador for Recycling Partners, Agent Sasco says he is confident that Jamaica’s sordid littering and illicit garbage-dumping problems can be abated in the near future.
The Camperdown High School old boy took to his Instagram page to showcase photographs and video clips of two waterways, bereft of garbage, in Balingen in Germany and Como in Italy, to illustrate that the same could be done in Jamaica in everyone works together.
“My fellow Jamaicans, I invite you to imagine a Jamaica where our rivers, streams, gullies, beaches and coastal areas are free of garbage. Do you think it’s possible? I do!!! The question is how? I don’t know exactly but I’m sure of one thing, we have to do it TOGETHER. What are your suggestions?” the Hope River artist noted.
Many of his fans contributed their ideas, but one comment which captured the Mama Pray artist’s attention was one that spoke extensively to recycling.
“I was waiting to see recycling mentioned. Consider this, recycling removes at least one major contributor to the problem (Plastic Bottles). It therefore, increases the capacity of the current system to manage other waste. Best of all, there is money to be generated from recycling which can be spent on improving our communities.@recyclingja ♻️,” he noted in response.
“I think plastics are a good place to start and eventually when the culture of recycling takes hold, we introduce other materials. Furthermore, we would have gathered the lessons and data to roll out the other programs more efficiently and effectively,” he noted in response to another suggestion.
His compatriot, Lightning singer Mortimer was also among the commenters. He noted that he believed that getting Jamaica to a litter-free state can be accomplished, but that any solid waste management initiative, “has to be a collective and consistent effort”.
“Bro I’m telling you . While in Europe I thought the same to myself,” he told Sasco who replied: “Mortimer. Trust mi!!! We affi try a ting star, look how yard pretty already so just imagine!!!”
Sasco also took note of, and engaged in conversation with one commenter, who noted that: “Our people need to realize clean streams are to benefit us with abundance of opportunities. It’s something I’ve been wondering all my life about Portland.”
“Yea we somehow have not made the connection that all the pollution in the rivers eventually end up on the beaches and in the sea, that we flock to on holidays. So the awareness can certainly be improved,” Sasco replied.
In February this year, Sasco renewed his role of brand ambassador for Recycling Partners of Jamaica (RPJ), after spending 2021 promoting the company’s objectives of recycling polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastics, via a series of activities, including the Friendship Gap project, where he successfully mobilized residents in Friendship Gap, St Mary, to try to create a recycling town.
That project saw the community members moving beyond plastics to electronics and glass bottles and aluminum, to create a holistic recycling area.
Presently Agent Sasco, whose given name is Jeffrey Campbell, is part of the RPJ’s planning committee, which creates and executes cluster projects, with an aim of recycling 800 million plastic bottles by year end.
The Country Bus singer is helping the RPJ to replicate the Friendship Gap project in other areas of the island, among them Melrose Hill in Manchester and Faith’s Pen in St Ann.
He had also expressed concern at his ambassadorship renewal, about the seeming acclimatization of Jamaicans to having garbage strewn everywhere.
“I’ve felt for a very long time that everywhere don’t need a little rubbish heap… In Jamaica, it just feels like we’re too comfortable being around garbage. Man a play domino and garbage heap a dem foot … Driving on the highway and seeing people toss things out their vehicles like dem a go magically disappear…” Sasco had said during his contract renewal ceremony.
He had also told The Gleaner that having seen solid waste management systems in countries such as Italy and Barbados, he was confident that the same could be accomplished in Jamaica.
“It’s a matter of mindset and, of course, there’s some infrastructure work to be done, but when you have the mindset first, then you think about how the infrastructure will come into that, so, look out for that as well,” he had said.
“We’ll be challenging people to really think about the fact that when you throw the garbage in the gullies, it ends up on the beach that you same one waan turn up and swim in on holiday. We really need to rethink what we’re doing,” he had said.