This island of ours, this piece of paradise perched on a 15,000 ft volcano, is like a ship of old, being a maritime phenomenon sailing along, all alone in the vast reaches of a major ocean. In actuality, the sea itself sails by us, bringing all matter of flotsam and jetsam to our shores.

Since the Age of Plastic, many such items float up on our beaches and rocky shores, or in the mouths of dead turtles. Today, this honoured phrase is not exactly a correct description, for flotsam is the floating wreckage of a ship or its cargo, while jetsam is any part of a vessel that has been thrown into the sea to lighten its load in a time of distress.

Perhaps we need a third word, such as ‘trashsam’ or ‘junksam’, so as define objects from ships that are discarded into the oceanic environment, not due to shipwreck or other distress, but through a flagrant disregard for the backyards and neighbourhoods that are the connected oceans and seas of an increasing fragile Earth.

Years ago, all that floated up on the south beaches were ‘greaseballs’ of tar, likely the ongoing results of the sinking of vast tonnages of oil tankers in the Second World War.

Those polluting items seem to have dissipated, only to be replaced in recent decades with a trash trove of plastics that will likely never decompose, but only break into smaller and smaller units of pollution and waiting death for many forms of life for which the oceans are home.

That dirty tradition in international waters is these days mirrored by a trashy local tradition imposed on the fragile landscape and its inhabitants by the uncaring, primarily of the male variety.

Many fail to appreciate that this (in places) trashy island is like a ship, surrounded by an often hostile environment, which, as suggested, is attacking us through the uncaring nature of some seafarers, while some members of the land crew are littering the decks with debris.

Many fail to understand that like the complement of a ship, we are all on this fixed aircraft carrier (as someone once described our military value to the United States) together: it is float or founder together, unless of course you have the ability to jump ship in some foreign airport or harbour.

Recently, in the westernmost parish (aka, The Upper Parish, God’s Country, etc, depending upon whom you listen to), teams from the Public Works Department have been doing a sterling job on roadside boundaries, doing what landholders should be doing for themselves (and for the “ship’), namely keeping their vegetation from becoming a public nuisance. In many places, the removal of the overgrowth reveals an undergrowth that might be a future archaeologist’s dream-find, but today is nothing but a cacophony of trash, orchestrated by passersby with utter disregard for the property of others, or for the more important consideration that all of Bermuda is but one, when considering the value of the landscape and the environment to the fundamental trade in tourism.

Not only beer and booze bottles (one has to jettison open liquor containers as soon as consumed, as it is an offence to have such open items in vehicles) proliferate, but many are the unimaginable objects that some jettison into the jungle. It is unclear who is responsible for cleaning up such carpets of a trashy tradition, once the Shermans of the verge-cutters have marched through to the sea.

It is unclear why the roots of invasives, such as Mexican Peppers, are not removed or dealt deathblows, so that they do not regrow in a few short months.

It is unclear if any connection is made in places that matter (and indeed among every member of the island’s crew) between the trashing of the environment and attempts to enhance the tourism economy.

It is unclear why few have the foresight to plant the taxpayer-cleared earth with flowering shrubs, hedges, annuals such as wild flowers or even plain old, proven, ground-cover vegetation.

Given that, it would not be necessary for the Government to do again what you should, while at the same time the beauty of Bermuda’s roadsides would be increased, and they provide much of the accessible scenery of the island for visitors.

It is unclear why so many have left it to so few to work to preserve what is best about Bermuda and it is unclear why a number of us have been willing philosophically to trash the place with the mantra ‘Tourism is Dead’ (Long live the King of IB!).

You might think there are no connections between roadside trash (and, by the truck load, illegal dumping on ‘vacant’ land), the major asset that is Bermuda’s landscape, and the essential facet of our overall economic livelihood, tourism.

While picking up each bottle and item of trash on a recently cut roadside near my home, I wondered when the captain and officers of our little ship of state will begin to espouse the mantra that we are all in this together, we need everyone to be pulling on the oars at the same time and in the same direction.

We could start to do so by each taking their trash home, not discarding it in our communal backyard.

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Edward Cecil Harris, MBE, JP, PHD, FSA is Director of the National Museum. Comments may be made to director@nmb.bm or 704-5480.