Speaking at an Institute of Marine Affairs symposium this week, Minister in the Ministry of the Environment, Ramona Ramdial announced that the Beverage Container Bill would soon be tabled in Parliament. "We are in the last stages of finalising clauses of the bill and of course it is going to act as a deterrent and an incentive to the collection of plastic beverage containers," Ms Ramdial said.
This would be much better news if it hadn't been announced a year ago by Minister Roodal Moonilal at the Environmental Management Authority's (EMA) Green Leaf awards ceremony with equal gusto. The legislation was promised then in September 2011 and it's to be hoped that the long delay represents careful consideration of the parameters of the law and will lead to legislation that apportions responsibility for the problem fairly while fulfilling the laudable goal of reducing the volume of non-biodegradable plastic that's going into this country's landfills and polluting our rivers and beaches.
This garbage is dangerous to wildlife, both marine and land-based, in addition to being unsightly and demands more effective action. Fines for littering have not proven to be effective, and volunteerism drives to clean up rivers and beaches, which have been fulfilling for participants as well as gathering thousands of pounds of garbage from these public spaces, will only take us so far.
According to an EMA press release about the importance of the bill issued in 2007, during a single day's cleanup exercise in 2006, 1,044 volunteers cleaned 14.8 miles of shoreline, gathering 18,624 pounds of garbage. Since 1998 the EMA has been evaluating and endorsing the value of economic incentives of the Deposit Refund System that's at the core of the bill.
Moving the driver for removing non-biodegradable plastics, along with tin and glass bottles, from punishment and goodwill to financial incentives would do much to drive active intervention in the removal of these messy and potentially lethal containers from our ecosystem. Carib Glass has long led this concept in Trinidad and Tobago by both offering a refund on its bottles and reusing the recovered glass in its manufacturing processes.
Creating that type of beneficial synergy in manufacturing processes and environmental impact is at the core of the Beverage Containers Bill and its successful implementation will be a critical lever in changing the relationship that manufacturers of beverages will have with their customers and their products.
At least one local entrepreneur has expressed interest in creating a plastic factory that will accept used plastic in its manufacturing process. Provisions in the bill are designed to encourage innovative applications of other recycling technologies. Re-engineering manufacturing systems to take profitable advantage of a return flow of used containers will not be a simple matter, and there is likely to be some chafing at the notion of the polluter pays principle embedded in the bill, which transfers the cost of the recycling initiatives arising from the legislation to importers, manufacturers and consumers.
For the Environmental Management Authority, designated as the administrator of this law and its implementation, this legislation is likely to stand as a big win for its battered reputation and an opportunity for the authority to change the conversation on recycling from stick to carrot, encouraging more organised participation throughout the chain from manufacturer to recycler.
The practical implementation of the recycling process is also likely to drive changes in consumer behaviour and provide an incentive for the type of garbage separation that has long been absent from local waste disposal at the household level. In a world increasingly choked by the very present debris of our consumption, such bold and initially costly moves will represent an important change in the way we choose, use and dispose of consumer goods in the future.