Our mul­ti­me­dia crew on Clean­ing Up the Mess wel­comes the gov­ern­ment's in­ten­tion stat­ed in the bud­get to "do a fea­si­bil­i­ty study" on re­cy­cling. This should in­volve the res­ur­rec­tion of the Draft Bev­er­age Bill with a tax placed on bot­tles. We dump valu­able re­cy­clable ma­te­r­i­al–some 50 mil­lion plas­tic bot­tles and 10 mil­lion glass bot­tles every month. We al­so wel­come the dou­bling of fines on lit­ter­ing and trust that lit­ter war­dens are as­signed to en­force this. Last week our mul­ti­me­dia crew–CNC3 cam­era­man Joel Al­lick, Guardian pho­tog­ra­ph­er Kei­th Math­ews and Ira Math­ur–were es­cort­ed to the Beetham land­fill, or the La Basse dump, by Carib Glass's Dave Ga­jad­har.

We dis­cov­ered then that all our ma­jor land­fills are over­flow­ing, not fenced, not lined and don't meet in­ter­na­tion­al safe­ty stan­dards. Se­nior en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists claim tox­ins from land­fills are run­ning in­to our wa­ter ta­ble and in­to our pro­duce. Our guest colum­nist this week is Al­lan de Boehm­ler, di­rec­tor of Waste Dis­pos­als Ltd and chair­man of the re­cy­cling com­mit­tee of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA).

RIGHT: Al­lan de Boehm­ler...di­rec­tor of Waste Dis­pos­als Ltd and chair­man of the re­cy­cling com­mit­tee of the Trinidad abd To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA).

Al­lan de Boehm­ler

At first I was a lit­tle ap­pre­hen­sive when I was asked to write this col­umn on lo­cal waste man­age­ment be­cause I am not a jour­nal­ist. Then af­ter think­ing about it for some­time it made sense be­cause I have been in­volved in the in­dus­try for 16 years so you could say I am a sea­soned gar­boligist. Af­ter so many years of dis­pos­ing of our waste in the same way, that is dump­ing at the ap­proved land­fill sites, we all need to com­mit to chang­ing our bad habits for the ben­e­fit of our en­vi­ron­ment and our beau­ti­ful coun­try. The Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment stat­ed on Mon­day that the long and ea­ger­ly await­ed re­port on waste man­age­ment leg­is­la­tion, pre­pared by the con­sul­tants from No­va Sco­tia will be com­plet­ed in six weeks.

This re­port is sup­posed to pave the way for a mod­ernised sys­tem of waste man­age­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go that is sim­i­lar to that of No­va Sco­tia whose en­vi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance is im­pres­sive to say the least.

The way for­ward

The most im­por­tant ini­tial goal in this new leg­is­la­tion is a tar­get for land­fill di­ver­sion. For ex­am­ple, Gov­ern­ment should com­mit to the di­ver­sion of 50 per cent of waste away from the land­fills with­in eight years. If this can be done we would be wast­ing less, re­cy­cling more while ben­e­fit­ting from the en­vi­ron­men­tal, so­cial and eco­nom­ic re­wards. To achieve a tar­get of 50 per cent di­ver­sion to start with we need three waste pro­cess­ing cen­tres. One cen­tre in North Trinidad, one in South and one in To­ba­go. In­stead of putting all garbage out for col­lec­tion four times a week, garbage can be col­lect­ed twice a week and re­cy­clables can be col­lect­ed twice a week.

In this way garbage col­lec­tion con­trac­tors re­main in­volved and are part of the so­lu­tion. All res­i­dents have to learn to sep­a­rate their pa­per, plas­tic, alu­mini­um and glass waste and place it in a sep­a­rate trans­par­ent re­cy­cling bag. On re­cy­cling col­lec­tion day, work­ers will eas­i­ly iden­ti­fy which are the bags to col­lect. Now the truck loaded with bagged re­cy­clables goes to the pro­cess­ing cen­tre and dumps its load on­to a con­vey­or. Af­ter some ini­tial me­chan­i­cal sort­ing the waste will be con­veyed along a sort­ing line where pick­ers will pick and sort the dif­fer­ent waste in­to piles. These piles are then pushed in­to a large and pow­er­ful baler, the re­sult­ing bales of waste can then be shipped for re­cy­cling.

Once the qual­i­ty and vol­ume of waste out­put be­come re­li­able one of our many en­tre­pre­neurs will con­vert the waste in­to new val­ue added prod­ucts. The eco­nom­ics of land, build­ing, plant and ma­chin­ery mean the pro­cess­ing cen­tre's rev­enue for the sale of its sort­ed and pack­aged out­put would be less than the cost to own and op­er­ate the fa­cil­i­ty. This is why the cen­tres should be owned by the state but op­er­at­ed by pri­vate en­ter­prise un­der con­tract for ef­fi­cien­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty. The up­com­ing bev­er­age con­tain­er leg­is­la­tion al­so will be a good way of con­tribut­ing to the land­fill di­ver­sion tar­gets. Scrapped ve­hi­cle tyres should be banned from the land­fills.

All im­porters of tyres should pay an ad­vance dis­pos­al fee which would be passed on to con­sumers. This fee would go in­to a fund. Up­on the de­liv­ery of used tyres to a shred­ding and chip­ping fa­cil­i­ty, an in­di­vid­ual will get back half this fee, the oth­er half goes to­ward the tyre-shred­ding com­pa­ny. The rub­ber chips can then be used as an eco­nom­ic ad­di­tive to ag­gre­gate for road con­struc­tion. Wide-rang­ing pub­lic aware­ness cam­paigns, us­ing all forms of me­dia, would be a cru­cial as­pect to achieve the land­fill di­ver­sion goals. With a good slo­gan, a catchy tune, some bold vi­su­als and a wake-up call, we could all make that change for a bet­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go."

This Sun­day on Clean­ing up the Mess on CNC3 at 10.30 am and 6 pm Ira Math­ur in­ter­views Al­lan de Boehm­ler and Al­ban Scott, ex­ec­u­tive man­ag­er, Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd, on the na­tion's land­fills to find out the health haz­ard they pose to the pop­u­la­tion. Send in your pho­tos and com­ments to cleaningupthemess@guardian.co.tt and join our face­book page on http://www.face­book.com/cleaningupthemess?ref=ts.