When I was younger I did a long investigative piece about beverage containers and recycling. This may have been published in the late 90s and at the time, as I recall, there was a dramatic national problem with plastic bottles as there were no local options for plastic recycling.
Glass was less problematic as we had, and still have, a local glass recycling plant; there were and are a few options for paper recycling as well, and cans and other scrap metal were collected and exported. There were no locally available recycling options for the Tetra Pak–the ubiquitous juice box that is simultaneously an engineering marvel and an environmental nightmare as it sandwiches plastic, paper and aluminium in a combination that requires proprietary technology to separate each element in the sandwich and make it available for recycling. (Only 20 per cent of all Tetra Paks are recycled globally every year, according to a Wikipedia article.)
All the people I interviewed for the story agreed the country desperately needed a beverage container recycling plan.Last year the Beverage Containers Bill was finally introduced in Parliament–and summarily kicked out. The bill, as its explanatory note says, sought "to provide for the establishment of the Beverage Containers Advisory Board, a deposit and refund system for prescribed sizes of beverage containers, a regime for the collection of beverage containers to reduce their disposal into the environment, thereby alleviating the pollution problem and for other related matters."
It is heartbreaking to feel that we simply do not care enough about the environment and the legacy we are leaving to push through the challenges and approve this bill. Clearly we need legislated incentives for beverage manufacturers, distributors and consumers to take responsibility for the waste these products generate.It's not all terrible news in T&T, however. Plastikeep has created an innovative way to get young people involved in recycling plastic. For the second consecutive year, it is running a plastic collection competition among school children in northwest Trinidad. A press release from Plastikeep said, "The 'Plasti-thon' competition, taking place from February 18-March 8, has been developed by Plastikeep to encourage school children to become aware of the dangers plastic poses to the natural environment and to wildlife, and to support them in becoming avid plastic recyclers and life-long caretakers of the environment."
As the T&T Guardian reported in January, "There are approximately 70 million plastic bottles manufactured and used in T&T a month."Seventy million bottles every month. That's astounding–and it only accounts for bottles, not other plastics such as shopping bags, grocery packaging or clamshell packaging for electronics. Most of this plastic ends up in landfills but an alarming amount of it is just thrown into drains and bushes, where it will eventually find its way into our waterways and seas, killing wildlife and maiming ecosystems.
When I was a little child, soft drinks came in glass bottles for which there were refunds. I remember when cans came into vogue–my siblings and I were eager to get our hands on them to grate off their tops and use the cans as cups. These metal cans were recyclable. And then the Jaliter changed everything; suddenly everything was in a PET bottle and once you'd pretty much filled your fridge with all the Jaliters of water it could hold, it was into the garbage with the rest. And we never looked back.
I'm glad for the Plasti-thon. I'm thrilled that Plastikeep reports that some 27 schools and 15,000 students are taking part in it this year; if the enthusiasm of the St Francois Girls' College students is any gauge, there are lots of children and their parents walking around picking up plastic right now as the Francois girls and some parents were doing at Carnival.
What would thrill me even more? A sustained cultural shift in which we are more aware of our plastic use and make more of an effort to recycle these plastics.I would be happier still if this were coupled with a return to refunds for all glass beverage bottles. I might actually faint for joy if we got a Tetra Pak recycling plant in T&T.Change is inevitable. But we must recognise that industrial progress has consequences and we must work to mitigate these consequences. Indeed, we must thirst to do so.
