Kali­fa Clyne

T&T has the cash to set up a re­cy­cling plant through the Gov­ern­ment's $4 bil­lion Green Fund but no po­lit­i­cal will to do that, says Stephen Har­ris, en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist and di­rec­tor of the re­cy­cling or­gan­i­sa­tion, SAVE Foun­da­tion.In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day he said T&T need­ed the will to set up a prop­er re­cy­cling in­dus­try.This fol­lows a week of fires in the Beetham land­fill which led to schools be­ing closed and busi­ness­es send­ing em­ploy­ees home as tox­ic smoke blew in­to the city.Yes­ter­day, the Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (SWM­COL) said all the fires at the dump had been brought un­der con­trol.The fires and re­sult­ing tem­po­rary clo­sure of the land­fill raised the is­sue of whether clos­ing the land­fill per­ma­nent­ly was a good al­ter­na­tive.Har­ris said: "We al­ready have re­cy­cling here. Res­i­dents from the Beetham Gar­dens com­mu­ni­ty­have been re­cy­cling for years.The prob­lem is that it is not reg­u­lat­ed and it is not a prop­erl­y­se­cured ini­tia­tive."

He said if Gov­ern­ment was to in­vest in re­cy­cling plants for dif­fer­ent ma­te­ri­als, it would not on­ly cre­ate hun­dreds of jobs but al­so es­tab­lish T&T as a re­cy­cling hub in the Caribbean."They would need to set up a waste-sep­a­ra­tion sys­tem with man­u­al labour or au­to­mat­ed sys­tems in or­der to sep­a­rate waste, glass, plas­tics, tin, alu­mini­um, card­boards and pa­pers," he added.Once that was done, Har­ris said, it would cre­ate down­stream in­dus­tries to do the ac­tu­al re­cy­cling of the ma­te­ri­als."A pro­cess­ing plant will bale the plas­tic and ship off to ac­tu­al re­cy­clers or in some cas­es plas­tic can be re­cy­cled in­to ny­lon thread which is then used to man­u­fac­ture cloth and cloth­ing."Re­cy­cling cre­ates the op­por­tu­ni­ty for in­dus­tries and em­ploy­ment," said Har­ris.The op­por­tu­ni­ty would be wel­comed by res­i­dents of the Beetham Gar­dens, some of whom have been en­gaged in an un­reg­u­lat­ed re­cy­cling busi­ness for years.In in­ter­views with the T&T Guardian on Sun­day, res­i­dents said they would wel­come the op­por­tu­ni­ty to work in a re­cy­cling plant.Har­ris said there were peo­ple who want­ed to set up a down­stream plant but there was no prop­er re­cy­cling be­ing done.

Ac­cord­ing to In­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er Gau­ri Shankar Gup­ta, as re­cent­ly as the last three months, In­di­an busi­ness­men had come to T&T to dis­cuss pro­pos­als to es­tab­lish re­cy­cling plants."I know that two or three busi­ness­men from In­dia have come to T&T in the past few months to de­liv­er pro­pos­als for a re­cy­cling plant but I do not know what came of those dis­cus­sions," Gup­ta said.

There is a large re­cy­cling in­dus­try in In­dia.Har­ris, who re­cy­cles reg­u­lar­ly, says T&T was in a strong po­si­tion to set up re­cy­cling plants."Most of the oth­er (Caribbean) is­lands con­sid­er them­selves too small to set up re­cy­cling fa­cil­i­ties. T&T can set it­self up as a re­cy­cling hub."He said oth­er coun­tries usu­al­ly paid re­cy­clers to take waste, like car tyres, and those were items that could be re­cy­cled to cre­ate buffers for ports and high­ways.