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| Minister of Family, Culture, Sports and Youth, Stephen Lashley (foreground), assisting residents with the clean up. (C. Pitt/BGIS) |
Minister of Family, Culture, Sports and Youth, Stephen Lashley, has called on Barbadians to adopt a zero tolerance to littering.
He made the call while taking part in a nationwide Youth Independence Clean Up, last Saturday near the Silver Hill hard court in Christ Church.
He said: "I would like to see that once the litter is removed that we don’t have a re-deposit. Barbadians sometimes like to drop things out of their cars… I would want to feel that this particular initiative is sending a signal that we need to stop that. We need to have a zero tolerance to littering in all of its forms. Dropping litter out of the side of your car or dropping it in any form is really something we should rebel against and we should move toward having a litter-free environment.
"You see, once litter is deposited we have a number of issues resulting; we have problems with our drainage systems, we have flooding, we have problems with unsightly neighbourhoods. I think a neighbourhood that looks clean sends a signal to everybody; when you are walking out to work and you don’t see litter but nice, clean surroundings, it actually lifts your spirit and you go into work with a different mind-set."
He pointed out that the cleanup was the first in a number of similar projects to get Barbadians to keep their surroundings clean. Mr. Lashley said the overall purpose of the initiative was to send a signal that "our young people are serious about creating a litter-free environment and if we would all play our part we wouldn’t have this much litter".
Styrofoam and plastic containers, old bicycle frames, wrought iron chairs, tin cans and PET bottles were just some of the refuse collected during the initiative.
The cleanup saw national groups such as the Silver Hill Raiders, the Girl Guides Association, the Barbados Youth Service and the Barbados Boy Scouts Association, as well as community and church groups, removing litter and debushing the area.
Minister Lashley thanked the Sanitation Service Authority, the Ministry of Transport and Works and the National Conservation Commission for partnering with the Division of Family and Youth to make the Youth Independence Clean Up a success. The Minister also lauded C. O. Williams Construction for providing transportation equipment to haul away the garbage collected.