By LYNAIRE MUNNINGS

Tribune Staff Reporter

lmunnings@tribunemedia.net

BAHAMIANS who throw garbage out of their car windows aren’t nasty, they’re “clean people” who simply want the trash out of their cars, St Anne’s MP Adrian White told the House of Assembly.

He then called for drive-through garbage bins along New Providence’s roads to catch it.

“Most people will say Bahamians are nasty people because we like to throw things out the window all the time,” he said last week. “But I look at it from the other side of the coin. I say Bahamians are clean people.

“They don’t want waste around them, you know. So if they’re driving in the car and there’s waste in the car, they throw it out the window. The immediate effect to them is they don’t have that trash on them no more.”

His solution is roadside bins designed so that motorists can slow down, toss their rubbish through a large opening and keep driving without leaving their vehicles. He suggested fitting each bin with a backboard so drivers would have a clear target.

“Put a nice big backboard around that bin, so the people have a little square to target, throw the trash at it, and it’s almost guaranteed to end up going down,” he said.

He pointed to a stretch of Johnson Road in his constituency where passing motorists, particularly jitney drivers, regularly toss out rum bottles and food containers, and the rubbish piles up over time.

“Because Johnson Road has a nice little tight pocket where the jitney driver always throws the rum bottle or the food out the window, and it builds up over time, a purposely designed bin should really take into consideration a drive-through service,” he said.

But the MP’s propsoal angered prominent environmentalist Joseph Darvill, who described persons throwing rubbish from their vehicles as ‘nasty.’

“That's a height of nastiness,” he said. “Disregard whether you're going to call it nasty or not. It's disregarding your environment, and it means that you put it out there because you expect some other lowly person to come and pick it up.”

Mr Darville, who serves as the Executive Chairman of Save The Bays and Chairman of Waterkeepers Bahamas, urged motorists to take their rubbish home with them.

“People who are driving vehicles, they have adequate space in their vehicles to secure their garbage until they reach home or until they get to a center where they can dispose of it,” he said.

“It just we become very nasty, terribly nasty people. We have no regard for the belly and the bosom of Mother Earth.

“I drove down some streets here one morning, and it's all littered with everything imaginable coming from all of those fast food places, and then the sanitation services have to come and clean it up.

"It's disgraceful. We got to start having a patrol by officers who's going to have an impact upon that particular disregard that we have perpetuated in our country, that the people have to give an account for that particular act, plain and simple. And if the MP says something so reprehensible, reprehensible as saying it's okay then for them to do that, then he should withdraw that comment.”

Throwing rubbish from a vehicle is already an offence. Since July 1, it has carried a $50 fixed penalty under amended environmental health regulations, while littering in a public place carries a $25 penalty. It is unclear to what extent the fines are enforced.

Mr White said the bins should be open to the public at all times, so motorists would always have somewhere to dump their rubbish instead of the roadside. He acknowledged that the idea would only work with regular collection, and suggested crews be assigned to empty the bins daily.

He also backed expanding the government’s satellite waste sites. He credited the late Vaughn Miller, the former Environment Minister, and Yamacraw MP Zane Lightbourne with establishing the sites in Yamacraw and extending them into St Anne’s and other eastern communities.