Hun­dreds of stu­dents in north-west scoured their neigh­bour­hoods and school en­vi­rons, for plas­tic that had been dumped in the streets or ear­marked for the dust­bin at home in a bid to col­lect the most plas­tic for the first ever Plas­ti-thon. Ten schools and over 5,000 stu­dents are par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Plas­ti-thon com­pe­ti­tion which is cur­rent­ly in progress and ends on June 8th. The com­pe­ti­tion has been de­vel­oped by the en­vi­ron­men­tal NGO, Plas­ti­keep, to en­cour­age school chil­dren to be­come aware of the dan­gers plas­tic pos­es to the nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment and to wildlife. It al­so aims to sup­port them in be­com­ing avid plas­tic re­cy­clers and life-long stew­ards of the en­vi­ron­ment. The in­di­vid­ual child, class and school that have col­lect­ed the most plas­tic will be award­ed a 'Right Start' ac­count at Re­pub­lic Bank and an en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly-linked prize that should ap­peal to the young­sters' sense of ad­ven­ture, and will in­clude an overnight stay at Mount Plaisir in Grande Riv­iere, for tur­tle watch­ing. One of the biggest man-made threats to the gi­ant leatherback tur­tles is plas­tic in the ocean, which of­ten caus­es them to suf­fo­cate and die when they mis­take it for jel­ly­fish and swal­low it.

"Each day, in Trinidad and To­ba­go, we use up to 1.2 mil­lion pieces of plas­tic and very lit­tle of it is dis­posed of prop­er­ly. A ma­jor con­cern is that plas­tic com­pris­es up to 80% of the garbage float­ing in the seas off T&T. (That's 15,000 pieces of lit­ter on every square kilo­me­tre of wa­ter!) When you add the fact that it doesn't break down like pa­per or or­gan­ic waste, the prob­lem gets worse with every new piece of dis­card­ed plas­tic," said Rosan­na Farmer, Project Di­rec­tor at Plas­ti­keep. Farmer al­so ex­plained that the prob­lem is caused part­ly through ig­no­rance, as many peo­ple throw waste in­to the en­vi­ron­ment be­liev­ing it will nat­u­ral­ly de­com­pose. How­ev­er, de­pend­ing on the type of plas­tic, it can take any­where be­tween 20 to 450 years to break down, and Sty­ro­foam nev­er does. In the mean­while, the dis­card­ed plas­tic pro­duces a tox­ic residue, which is harm­ful to all liv­ing species, in­clud­ing hu­mans. Plas­ti­keep is a pi­lot project that seeks to raise pub­lic aware­ness about the haz­ards of plas­tic waste, pro­vide in­for­ma­tion about prop­er plas­tic waste dis­pos­al, cul­ti­vate a cul­ture of plas­tic re­cy­cling and re­duce the amount of plas­tic waste de­posit­ed in land­fills and the nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment. As part of the pi­lot, the or­gan­i­sa­tion pro­vides re­cy­cle bins to com­mu­ni­ties in north-west Trinidad, and based on da­ta col­lect­ed will be able to gauge the vol­ume of plas­tic waste pro­duced na­tion­al­ly and de­ter­mine the vi­a­bil­i­ty of a na­tion­wide ini­tia­tive. The project is the brain­child of the Green­light Net­work and re­ceives fund­ing from the Gov­ern­ment's Green Fund.

The dan­gers of plas­tic:

Wildlife can mis­take plas­tics and oth­er lit­ter for food-with fa­tal ef­fects. Tur­tles, for ex­am­ple, mis­take float­ing plas­tic bags for their main food source: jel­ly­fish. They can suf­fo­cate and die from in­gest­ing the plas­tic im­posters. The de­bris, chem­i­cals and residues from plas­tics can kill many oth­er forms of sea life, in­clud­ing sharks and sea birds. They are harmed not on­ly by ac­ci­den­tal­ly eat­ing plas­tic but al­so by en­tan­gle­ment in bags, straps and pack­ing ma­te­ri­als found on or be­low the wa­ter sur­face. Hu­mans are equal­ly at risk: burn­ing plas­tic caus­es tox­ic emis­sions that are haz­ardous to hu­mans and yet this is what hap­pens to a lot of what goes to the dumps in Trinidad and To­ba­go. In ad­di­tion, Sty­ro­foam is a very tox­ic ma­te­r­i­al and food should not be stored in it. Plas­tic takes up un­nec­es­sary space in land­fills. Even if we dis­pose of plas­tics in the garbage bin, we add to the prob­lem of waste man­age­ment. Our land­fills are filled and over­flow­ing. If we di­vert­ed plas­tics out of land­fills and in­to re­cy­cling, we would re­duce the sol­id waste bur­den in the coun­try by as much as 20%.

What Can I Do with Plas­tic Waste?

There are sev­er­al ways you can help re­duce the bur­den of plas­tic waste on our coun­try: First, re­duce the amount you con­sume. If you can choose to pre­pare foods and drinks in reusable con­tain­ers rather than buy dis­pos­able ones, do! You will ben­e­fit from a health­i­er di­et as well as re­duce the amount of garbage for dis­pos­al. When you do buy plas­tic bot­tles or con­tain­ers, try to keep and reuse them be­fore dis­pos­al. While it is not safe to reuse dis­pos­able plas­tics with food for a very long time, do con­sid­er wash­ing and reusing bot­tles once or twice to keep drink­ing wa­ter or juices rather than buy­ing a new bot­tle; reuse larg­er con­tain­ers around the home for stor­age. As much as pos­si­ble, take plas­tic gro­cery bags back to the gro­cery when you shop, so that you can avoid bring­ing home more plas­tics with every gro­cery trip. If you live in the Plas­ti­keep pi­lot project ar­eas, crush your plas­tics and keep them in a sep­a­rate bag from your garbage. When the bag is full, bring it to a drop-off point. Your plas­tics will be re­cy­cled and you can be con­fi­dent you have not added to the plas­tic waste prob­lem in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

If you live out­side the Plas­ti­keep pi­lot project ar­eas, con­tact a plas­tic re­cy­cling com­pa­ny to find a lo­ca­tion where you can de­posit plas­tic and oth­er re­cy­clables, or vis­it their web­site:

www.plas­ti­keep.com