The Jamaica Environment Trust (JET) was formed in 1991 by a group of citizens concerned about the state of Jamaica’s natural environment. At the time of JET’s beginning, there were many environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs), either parish based (for e.g. Portland Environment Protection Association) or involved in operating national parks ( for e.g. Jamaica Conservation and Development Trust) or issue based ( for e.g. Natural History Society) or species based (for e.g. Gosse Bird Club). The original members of JET, mostly friends and business colleagues of its founder Diana McCaulay, thought there was a niche for so-called ‘brown issues’, because no other group focused on that. The interest in brown issues had also been sparked by the enormous amount of garbage along the Palisadoes strip and Diana’s early visits to the Harbour View, Greenwich and Western Sewage Plants, Riverton Waste Disposal Site.

JET’s first few projects were clean–ups in Grant’s Pen, Hellshire and Old Harbour. However, it soon became obvious that the clean-ups were unsustainable. The early members believed the problem was that there was not enough awareness about the environment and there would be very little protection unless awareness increased. Since at the time many of those early members were young parents, they decided to start with environmental education projects for children.