In a bid to push for en­vi­ron­men­tal aware­ness, leg­is­la­tion and en­force­ment in T&T the Guardian Me­dia Group is show­cas­ing best prac­tices from oth­er coun­tries and lo­cal re­cy­cling ex­perts with our mul­ti me­dia se­ries, Clean­ing up the Mess, every Thurs­day in the Guardian and Sun­days on CNC3 at 10.30 am and 6 pm.

Christoph Peleikis,

Deputy Head of

Mis­sion and Con­sul,

Em­bassy of Ger­many

When I was asked to be a guest colum­nist for the T&T Guardian on the Ger­man ex­pe­ri­ence per­tain­ing to en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues and what T&T could learn from it, one thing im­me­di­ate­ly came to my mind. That was the ex­pres­sion of per­plex­i­ty on the face of for­eign­ers be­ing con­front­ed with the nu­mer­ous bins we usu­al­ly have in our homes. One for glass, one for pa­per, one for pack­ag­ing ma­te­r­i­al, one for bi­o­log­i­cal waste and so on. Can this be an ex­am­ple for Trinidad and To­ba­go? Sep­a­rat­ing waste is per­haps one of our pet projects and maybe we ex­ag­ger­ate a lit­tle bit. It is, how­ev­er, part of a cy­cle that makes most sense and that may be ad­um­brat­ed by three words: Re­duce, reuse and re­cov­er.

Ger­many's closed cy­cle man­age­ment is a good ex­am­ple how en­vi­ron­men­tal pol­i­cy can con­tribute to en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, re­source ef­fi­cien­cy, cli­mate pro­tec­tion–and thus at the same time to greater eco­nom­ic ef­fi­cien­cy. The idea to col­lect dif­fer­ent re­cy­clable ma­te­ri­als sep­a­rate­ly and to rein­tro­duce them in­to the eco­nom­ic cy­cle was the ba­sis for an act that en­tered in­to force dur­ing the mid-90s. To­day, more than 250,000 peo­ple in Ger­many work in waste man­age­ment. The an­nu­al turnover of waste man­age­ment ex­ceeds �50 bil­lion which is near­ly TT$ 400 bil­lion. More than two-thirds of waste is re­cy­cled. These num­bers give an im­pres­sive idea of how im­por­tant en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion has be­come for the econ­o­my.

One of the keys to waste man­age­ment pol­i­cy in Ger­many is prod­uct re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. Ac­cord­ing to our pack­ag­ing laws, man­u­fac­tur­ers have to cater for the re­cy­cling or dis­pos­al of any pack­ag­ing ma­te­r­i­al they sell. They are oblig­ed to pay a li­cence fee of a few cents that is based on the ma­te­r­i­al used in pack­ag­ing. The fees take in­to ac­count the cost of col­lec­tion, sort­ing and re­cy­cling. The sys­tem thus en­cour­ages man­u­fac­tur­ers to cut down on pack­ag­ing as this saves them the cost of li­cence fees. The con­tri­bu­tion of mod­ern waste man­age­ment to cli­mate pro­tec­tion is re­mark­able as well. Over the last 15 years emis­sions of green­house gas pol­lu­tants from waste man­age­ment were re­duced by more than 31 mil­lion tonnes of CO2 equiv­a­lents per year.

Small is­land states, such as T&T, are among the first to suf­fer from the ef­fects of cli­mate change. The re­duc­tion of green­house gas emis­sions by us­ing re­new­able en­er­gies and en­er­gy ef­fi­cient tech­nolo­gies is thus in the coun­try's best in­ter­est. Since 2004, the Ger­man Gov­ern­ment has been sup­port­ing the Caribbean Re­new­able En­er­gy De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (CREDP). So far, �6.75 mil­lion or ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$54 mil­lion has been al­lo­cat­ed. Ger­man ex­perts are in the re­gion to pro­vide tech­ni­cal and fi­nan­cial ex­per­tise to stim­u­late the in­vest­ment cli­mate in re­new­able en­er­gies in the Caribbean. In T&T, there is an enor­mous po­ten­tial in re­new­able en­er­gies, such as wind and so­lar en­er­gy, as well as for im­prov­ing en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy.

The us­age of en­er­gy-sav­ing light bulbs alone would bring down the elec­tric­i­ty bill by ten per cent. Us­ing less of the lim­it­ed nat­ur­al fos­sil fu­els for the pro­duc­tion of en­er­gy would al­so mean that more oil and gas could be used to gen­er­ate in­come need­ed for the sake of the coun­try.�I am con­vinced that the most im­por­tant is­sues when it comes to im­ple­ment­ing mea­sures to pro­tect the en­vi­ron­ment are con­vic­tion and in­cen­tives. Peo­ple need to be con­vinced why it is in their own in­ter­est to use less re­sources or not to clog drains with lit­ter. This has to start as ear­ly as in school. Apart from that, peo­ple need in­cen­tives.

When buy­ing a new car, TV set or wash­ing ma­chine, they need to know that at the end of the day they will pay less with cer­tain mod­els as they use less gas, elec­tric­i­ty or wa­ter. The Ger­man Gov­ern­ment has es­tab­lished le­gal and eco­nom­ic pa­ra­me­ters for a more ef­fi­cient use of re­sources and for the pro­mo­tion of re­new­able en­er­gies. State funds are for ex­am­ple used to fi­nan­cial­ly sup­port the in­stal­la­tion of so­lar pan­els on the roofs of pri­vate house­holds. And here in T&T the sun shines even brighter than in Ger­many.

More In­fo

This week on Clean­ing up the Mess on CNC3 on Sun­day at 10.30 am and 6 pm Ira Math­ur starts a three-part se­ries on the re­cy­cling ex­pe­ri­ence in T&T with lo­cal waste man­age­ment ex­perts and prac­ti­tion­ers – Chris­t­ian Scott Ques­nel. man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Resin Con­vert­ers Lim­it­ed; Ri­car­do Gay, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Tech­ni­cal Sys­tems Lim­it­ed and Richard Tang, man­age­ment con­sul­tant. En­gage with us. Send in your com­ments and pho­tographs to cleaningupthemess@guardian.co.tt