There’s a crisis brewing far away from residential communities across the country. It is the overloading of Trinidad’s three major landfills which, according to the Public Utilities Minister a year ago, are nearing capacity.
While the issue has had attention from both the media and parliamentarians, it has not garnered the national attention and action it warrants. Perhaps this is because the problem is not in our faces daily. Or, perhaps, it is because we as residential, commercial and industrial consumers/users throw the problems in the garbage truck a few times a week and the garbage truck moves the problems away and out of sight.
The problem I’m talking about is our trash. That ranges from food we throw out; soft drink bottles we’re done with to wrappers that come with the things we buy. Because there is no system of separation in place, everything is lumped together, but in reality, much of the waste we are disposing of as a nation could be recycled. This, in turn, would lighten the load on our nation’s landfills and extend their useful life.
I’ve spent the last week visiting different cities in Japan, looking at their systems for segregating trash and recycling. The small town of Osaki with a population of just over 12,000 residents has become so famous for its waste management, that people travel from all over the world to study the methods by which they operate. Osaki recycles 80 per cent of the waste it produces.
Residents must separate their garbage into plastics, paper and glass otherwise the garbage truck will not pick it up. They’ve taken it even further recycling ceramics, spray cans, and small appliances among other things. It’s what has made Osaki Town’s recycling system one to be envied and studied. All told, the effort extends to sorting trash into more than two dozen categories for recycling and/or reuse. Even more rewarding is the fact that 60 per cent of the waste the town generates is organic. That includes 30 per cent kitchen waste and 30 per cent plant waste.
Guardian Media's Lead Editor-Newsgathering Ryan Bachoo speaks during the opening of The Association for Promotion of International Cooperation (APIC) Journalism Fellowship Programme on Monday in Tokyo, Japan.
PICTURE COURTESY APIC
By the time Osaki Town finishes recycling what residents are throwing out, only 20 per cent of what goes into the trash makes it to the landfill. The final disposal site has been given a life expectancy until 2060.
Sure, one could argue that implementing a policy for 12,000 people is easier than for T&T’s 1.4 million population. It would also be right to argue that many other towns and cities in Japan don’t come close to the success story of Osaki Town.
However, Osaki is a microcosm of what bigger cities and countries like ours should be striving to achieve. This is merely why delegates from different countries, including T&T, travel to the town in southern Japan to learn about their recycling systems.
Locally, some criticise the culture by which we operate and say a lack of discipline as a society is a barrier to us achieving these things. They are not totally wrong. Streets across our major cities and boroughs are often an eyesore, with trash in drains and on sidewalks. That’s not a government problem. That’s a people problem. Littering is a cancer in this country and calls for a greater level of individual responsibility.
However, we should not shirk our collective responsibility to become a better recycling nation. To say people are not interested in recycling would be incorrect. In the absence of a legislative framework, convenient access points and supporting infrastructure, former Solid Waste Management Company (SWMCOL) CEO Kevin Thompson says we have a recycling participation rate of between ten and 20 per cent.
Pockets of the private sector have already begun encouraging recycling within their own organisations in keeping with the global green movement and environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG). This is where the Ministry of Planning and Development, with responsibility for the environment, needs to harness that interest and expand it to more private sector companies and the public as well. The Government must not only show interest but also lead by example. It can be as simple as introducing recycling bins at every government building in the country. Then, it can expand to the streets of the cities and towns.
Most importantly, any conversations surrounding recycling must include educating children from the primary school level. I visited Osaki Elementary School on Thursday and had lunch with the students there. Some found it curious that I was vegetarian, others were amused. But it wasn’t the meal that mattered to me. Lunchtime is a routine for these primary schoolers. First, they dish out their own serving of the meal the school’s chef would have prepared. When they’re finished, they dispose of their leftovers in a designated pot. The milk cartons they’ve used are properly rinsed before being flattened and stacked on each other, ready to recycle. Lunchtime might seem like a task for the 300-student population, but that’s how they’ve been trained since their first day at school. They know nothing else. The older generation calls them “recycle natives”.
If we as a country want to forge a more sustainable path, our primary schoolers have to grow up knowing nothing but recycling. That’s how the new culture will be created and ultimately ingrained.
Ryan Bachoo is the Lead Editor–Newsgathering and CNC3’s 7 pm news anchor. He is currently in Japan on The Association for Promotion of International Cooperation (APIC) Journalism Fellowship Programme travelling to different cities across the country to study their environmental and recycling systems.
