AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

Re­porter

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

Plas­tic bot­tles are one of the most com­mon ma­te­ri­als found in the world’s waste stream.

Glob­al­ly, an es­ti­mat­ed one mil­lion plas­tic bot­tles are pur­chased every minute. In Trinidad and To­ba­go, many of them even­tu­al­ly end up in drains, rivers and land­fills—fu­elling the flood­ing night­mare res­i­dents know all too well dur­ing the rainy sea­son.

But Every Bot­tle Back TT be­lieves that, through its ini­tia­tive, this night­mare can be sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced while putting mon­ey back in­to peo­ple’s pock­ets.

“We’re fo­cused on turn­ing waste in­to val­ue, col­lect­ing plas­tic bot­tles, keep­ing them out of land­fills and cre­at­ing in­come op­por­tu­ni­ties for peo­ple across T&T,” gen­er­al man­ag­er Bren­dan Sir­ju told Guardian Me­dia.

Op­er­at­ed by Con­tain­er Re­cy­cling Ser­vices Lim­it­ed, the project has, since its launch in 2022, man­aged to di­vert 667 tonnes of plas­tic from land­fills—equiv­a­lent to 40 mil­lion bot­tles.

The project cur­rent­ly of­fers $2.80 per kilo­gramme of plas­tic bot­tles, rough­ly five cents per bot­tle. While it may not sound like much at first, for many, those small amounts quick­ly add up.

“What we do find is a lot of per­sons cash­ing out at Christ­mas time. So they save up dur­ing the year, and they cash out a big amount just be­fore Christ­mas to buy their gifts and what­not. Be­cause waste has val­ue,” Sir­ju ex­plained.

From com­mu­ni­ty groups and church­es to in­di­vid­ual col­lec­tors, peo­ple across the coun­try have joined the Every Bot­tle Back project, gath­er­ing and de­liv­er­ing plas­tic bot­tles.

Mem­bers of the pub­lic can al­so op­er­ate as en­tre­pre­neurs by col­lect­ing bot­tles in their com­mu­ni­ties and pay­ing oth­ers for their re­cy­clables, help­ing to sup­port the lo­cal project in ar­eas where it has no of­fi­cial branch­es.

Sir­ju added that Car­ni­val 2026 al­so saw a grow­ing num­ber of fete and event pro­mot­ers step­ping up to en­sure bot­tles from their events were col­lect­ed in­stead of dis­card­ed.

The project is not lim­it­ed to wa­ter bot­tles alone. It al­so ac­cepts juice bot­tles, soft drink bot­tles, sham­poo bot­tles, bleach con­tain­ers, alu­mini­um cans and, more re­cent­ly, glass.

How­ev­er, the main fo­cus re­mains PET (poly­eth­yl­ene tereph­tha­late) bot­tles—the clear plas­tic bev­er­age con­tain­ers used for wa­ter, soft drinks and juice.

“The caps can be on. It doesn’t mat­ter, it could be crushed, it could be dirty. It doesn’t mat­ter. Once it comes in.

At the bail­ing fa­cil­i­ty in Mt Lam­bert, the bot­tles are col­lect­ed, sort­ed and pressed in­to bales in or­der to be ex­port­ed to re­gion­al re­cy­cling plants, where they can be processed in­to new prod­ucts and ma­te­ri­als.

Al­though cor­po­rate groups and event pro­mot­ers con­tribute, Sir­ju said ap­prox­i­mate­ly 95 per cent of col­lect­ed bot­tles come from or­di­nary cit­i­zens.

“Some peo­ple don’t even care about the mon­ey,” he said. “They just do not want it go­ing to the land­fill.”

While Trinidad and To­ba­go still has a long way to go in achiev­ing ze­ro waste and re­duc­ing plas­tic pol­lu­tion, projects like this sug­gest that progress can be­gin with some­thing as sim­ple as not throw­ing away an emp­ty plas­tic bot­tle.