PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The Glass Loop Move­ment, is aim­ing to re­duce land­fill pres­sure across Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The move­ment, which was un­veiled in part­ner­ship with ANSA Pack­ag­ing, Guardian Me­dia Ltd, Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny (SWM­COL) and the Hy­att Re­gency, where the move­ment was launched yes­ter­day, is a strate­gic push for re­cy­cling.

To aid with this dri­ve, it was an­nounced that spe­cial bins will be placed at pop­u­lar es­tab­lish­ments to en­cour­age prop­er dis­pos­al of glass.

The Glass Loop Move­ment man­ag­er, Adan­na Tay­lor, said launch­ing the ini­tia­tive on Glob­al Re­cy­cling Day was sym­bol­ic.

“To­day a glob­al re­minder that the choic­es that we make about ma­te­ri­als, waste and re­sources have last­ing im­pacts on our en­vi­ron­ment and our econ­o­my. It is there­fore fit­ting that we be­gin this move­ment on a day ded­i­cat­ed to rec­og­niz­ing the val­ue of ma­te­ri­als that we of­ten over­look, and glass is def­i­nite­ly one of those ma­te­ri­als, es­pe­cial­ly here in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” she said.

She told the launch that every year the equiv­a­lent of over 200 mil­lion glass bot­tles are dis­posed and that on­ly a small per­cent­age of those bot­tles are re­cov­ered.

“The rest of­ten ends up in land­fills or in the nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment, where a re­source with enor­mous po­ten­tial is sim­ply lost. And that is what glass is...a re­source. Glass is in­fi­nite­ly re­cy­clable. It can be re­cy­cled again and again and again with­out los­ing its qual­i­ty or pu­ri­ty. A glass bot­tle can be­come an­oth­er bot­tle, and then an­oth­er, and then an­oth­er, form­ing a true cir­cu­lar loop of pro­duc­tion and reuse. In fact, glass is the on­ly tru­ly sus­tain­able pack­ag­ing ma­te­r­i­al for bev­er­ages,” Tay­lor said.

How­ev­er she stressed that pub­lic sup­port was re­quired for this dri­ve to be a suc­cess.

“These bins will make it eas­i­er than ever for cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es to re­turn their used glass bot­tles and en­sure they’re prop­er­ly col­lect­ed and re­cy­cled. But in­fra­struc­ture alone, sad­ly, will not cre­ate mean­ing­ful change. Re­al change will come from peo­ple, from house­holds de­cid­ing to sep­a­rate their glass, from busi­ness­es choos­ing to par­tic­i­pate, and from com­mu­ni­ties em­brac­ing a cul­ture of re­cy­cling,” she said.

SWM­COL’s man­ag­er of re­cy­cling and re­cov­ery, Ter­ri Ann Carter Le Fon, said glass re­cov­ery could be a ma­jor help to waste man­age­ment in the coun­try.

“Im­prov­ing re­cov­ery is cen­tral to a sus­tain­able sys­tem. Every tonne of ma­te­r­i­al di­vert­ed rep­re­sents a re­duc­tion in land­fill de­pen­dence and a step to­wards a more sus­tain­able ap­proach to waste and re­source man­age­ment. The Glass Loop Move­ment rep­re­sents a mul­ti-stake­hold­er ap­proach to ad­dress­ing this change.”