Charles Kong Soo

Used plas­tic bot­tles will soon be ex­port­ed in a move that will re­duce flood­ing in T&T, says Min­is­ter of the En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources Gan­ga Singh.He said of­fer­ing an eco­nom­ic in­cen­tive for re­cy­cling bev­er­age con­tain­ers would al­so help re­duce the in­dis­crim­i­nate dump­ing of plas­tic waste in land­fills scat­tered through­out the is­land.

He said his min­istry was in ad­vanced dis­cus­sions with the Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Co (SWM­COL) to have plas­tic bot­tles com­pressed and ex­port­ed in­stead of pol­lut­ing land­fills and re­leas­ing haz­ardous chem­i­cals in­to the soil.Singh al­so said the Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (Cepep) would be em­ployed to clean up plas­tic waste be­fore the re­fund sys­tem was im­ple­ment­ed.

He said the Gov­ern­ment was em­bark­ing on a three-pronged ap­proach to tack­le the prob­lem of pol­lu­tion and waste man­age­ment through of­fer­ing eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits, ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes and strict law en­force­ment.Singh spoke at a Basel Con­ven­tion Re­gion­al Cen­tre/Glob­al En­vi­ron­ment Fa­cil­i­ty (BCRC) work­shop on waste and chem­i­cal man­age­ment to en­hance the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Stock­holm Con­ven­tion in the Caribbean re­gion.

It was held at the Movi­eTowne Com­plex Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, In­vad­er's Bay, Port-of-Spain on Tues­day. An­oth­er ini­tia­tive was Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan's an­nounce­ment that the num­ber of lit­ter war­dens would be in­creased to 150 to en­sure the Lit­ter Act was en­forced.

Singh al­so pro­posed that the fines for an­i­mal traf­fick­ing and poach­ing en­dan­gered species should be in­creased and such of­fences be more se­vere­ly pros­e­cut­ed.BCRC steer­ing com­mit­tee chair­man Kis­han Ku­mars­ingh said elec­tron­ic waste in the form of dumped elec­tron­ic equip­ment, such as com­put­ers and cell­phones, was a bur­geon­ing waste prob­lem.