Jamaica is facing a growing waste management crisis that demands an immediate, fundamental shift in how residents dispose of large volume waste, according to the top official of the country’s National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA). Speaking before Parliament’s Infrastructure and Physical Development Committee this Wednesday, Executive Director Audley Gordon issued a stark warning: current public disposal habits are not only draining the national budget but also pose severe long-term risks to the island’s environmental health. For decades, Gordon explained, Jamaican residents have operated under the assumption that the government is fully responsible for removing all bulky waste, a model that has become unworkable as waste volumes rise and public costs balloon. Unlike many other global jurisdictions that place disposal responsibility on the waste generator, Jamaica’s current system relies on property tax revenue to fund full curbside collection of large items — a framework Gordon described as fundamentally unsustainable. The core of the solution, he argues, lies in a targeted public education campaign designed to reshape public understanding of waste responsibility. The campaign will emphasize that individual households are accountable for the large waste they produce, including old household appliances, discarded furniture, and construction debris from renovations or demolitions. Gordon pointed to global best practices where waste generators pay for professional bulky waste disposal based on volume or weight, a model that aligns incentive for reduced waste generation and proper disposal across communities. The urgent call for reform comes as widespread improper disposal has become a pervasive public issue across Jamaican communities. Residents routinely leave large waste items on sidewalks, in gullies, and along public roadways, creating public safety hazards, clogging drainage systems, and damaging natural ecosystems. St Andrew North Western Member of Parliament Duane Smith highlighted that this problem extends beyond bulky waste to a broader cultural disregard for proper waste disposal, citing a firsthand example of a driver throwing food packaging directly onto a major Kingston roadway earlier the same day, an act he called a national disgrace. Committee chair Heroy Clarke added that the crisis is not rooted solely in public behavior, but also in lax enforcement of existing waste management laws. Clarke stressed that current legislation already provides the framework to crack down on improper disposal, but that the NSWMA has failed to consistently apply these rules, allowing bad disposal habits to become normalized. He specifically called out the common practice of residents leaving construction debris from home demolitions and renovations on public sidewalks, expecting the NSWMA to cover the full cost of removing truckloads of waste — a burden the authority cannot sustain. In response to these criticisms, Gordon outlined ongoing steps the NSWMA is taking to strengthen its enforcement capacity. Until recently, the agency only had a single formal enforcement director position, with all other enforcement staff working as non-established, unattached workers. The NSWMA has now secured 150 formal established enforcement positions from the government, and is currently in the process of recruiting higher-caliber staff to scale up enforcement operations, issuing more than 500 fines for improper disposal every month. Even with expanded staffing, Gordon acknowledged that enforcement alone cannot reverse the crisis, noting that current fines are too low to create an effective deterrent for repeat offenders. The appeal for public behavior change comes as the NSWMA continues its ongoing bulky waste cleanup initiatives across the country, including recent removal efforts targeting abandoned appliances and derelict waste in Portmore, St Catherine that have drawn attention to the scale of the problem facing Jamaican communities. (Photo description: NSWMA crews remove an abandoned refrigerator during the authority’s regional derelict vehicle and bulky waste cleanup program in Portmore, St Catherine.)