The plan for a national clean-up drive using the resources of the country's 14 regional corporations, with support from the private sector and the general public, sounds good in theory. However, like so many good ideas, the devil will be in the details.
Proper planning and implementation is key if the initiative announced Wednesday by Local Government Minister Kazim Hosein is to have any real, long-term success. He may well find out that an idea that worked so well on a limited scale in San Fernando, when he was mayor of the country's second city, might be harder to roll out nationwide.
However, there can be substantial benefits, economically, environmentally and health wise from a clean up campaign but it must go well beyond the physical removal of waste to include upgrading the waste management infrastructure, strengthening and enforcing the relevant legislation and changing mindsets.
T&T has become very much a "throw away" society–an unhealthy practice that comes back to haunt us every time even moderate rainfall brings on flash flooding or when fires break out at a landfill, spewing toxic smoke into the atmosphere.
So far, at least in theory, Government seems on the right track with this plan. Mr Hosein has promised a robust public education campaign and his Cabinet colleague, Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi, is dealing with another critical component–legislation for waste recycling and waste energy production.
If all this sounds familiar, it is because there have been nationwide clean-ups before, most notably the one spearheaded by then Prime Minister ANR Robinson in 1987, just months after his National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR) administration took office. The country did not stay clean for very long, unfortunately.
To say that T&T, a heavily industrialised small island developing state, has a waste management problem does not begin to sum up the extent of the challenge. The average citizen generates approximately four pounds of waste per day, which adds up to 1,000 tonnes of garbage being dumped at landfill sites that are several years past their expiry dates.
T&T's largest landfill at Beetham, located on the outskirts of Port-of-Spain, accounts for 65 per cent of the country's waste and the others are not in much better shape. All of them are bursting at the seams and because the holes dug to receive garbage are not lined, leachate produced as waste decomposes continually seeps into the soil, taking a toll on the country's fragile ecosystem.
It does not help that the other methods of waste disposal commonly practised here is incineration, also done in a manner that is environmentally unfriendly, so that toxic gases, including the dioxins produced by burning plastic, pollute the air and the ash releases heavy metals and other toxins into the soil.
For these and many other reasons, the national clean up must be part of an overall strategy to transform T&T's waste management systems and practices. That requires significant upgrades in handling, collection, transportation for re-use and recycling, along with recovery of material that can be harnessed for energy production and for fertiliser. That way, only the useless waste that cannot be re-used, recycled or recovered will be all that goes to the country's overburdened landfill.
In addition, public education is key to eradicate poor waste management practices and to help citizens identify different types of waste and appropriate disposal methods.
Nothing less than a concerted, multi-faceted effort will do. Anything less will be a waste of time.
To say that T&T, a heavily industrialised small island developing state, has a waste management problem does not begin to sum up the extent of the challenge. The average citizen generates approximately four pounds of waste per day, which adds up to 1,000 tonnes of garbage being dumped at landfill sites that are several years past their expiry dates.