Shal­iza Has­sanali

Less than two months af­ter launch­ing a plas­tic re­cov­ery pi­lot project called Plas­ti­keep in Diego Mar­tin, "green-mind­ed" peo­ple through­out the coun­try are clam­our­ing for the ini­tia­tive to be in­tro­duced in their com­mu­ni­ties, schools and busi­ness­es. Christo­pher Broad­bridge, who has been pro­vid­ing ser­vices to Plas­ti­keep in the area of writ­ing con­cep­tu­al frame­work and con­duct­ing mar­ket re­search, said the one-year project de­vel­oped by en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist and project founder, Rosan­na Farmer, has been met with keen in­ter­est over the last sev­en weeks. So much so, Broad­bridge, speak­ing in Mar­aval last week, said they were hop­ing to make this ini­tia­tive a na­tion­al ef­fort. Plas­ti­keep ad­dress­es the mount­ing prob­lem of plas­tic waste as well as lack of con­scious­ness around prop­er plas­tic dis­pos­al.

Dis­tricts such as Wood­brook, Port-of-Spain, Glen­coe, St Ann's and Mar­aval have been call­ing for Plas­ti­keep bins to be in­stalled in their com­mu­ni­ties, busi­ness­es and schools. Broad­bridge said Diego Mar­tin was se­lect­ed by Farmer as the first ser­vice area as a mat­ter of lo­gis­ti­cal con­ve­nience for the project's pi­lot phase and al­so for the den­si­ty and di­ver­si­ty of neigh­bour­hoods who live in close prox­im­i­ty to each oth­er. The project kicked off weeks be­fore Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar called on the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to join in a Clean-up and Beau­ti­fy T&T, which took place on June 27.

Broad­bridge main­tained that the Clean-Up ini­tia­tive was a time­ly one. "I hope it meets all of its ob­jec­tives, and brings enough aware­ness about the need for pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion and en­cour­age­ment in this ex­er­cise."

Em­pow­er­ing peo­ple

Plas­ti­keep's ser­vice does not in­clude the process of re­cy­cling, but pro­vides the pub­lic with di­rect ac­cess to it through the fa­cil­i­ta­tion of plas­tic waste re­cov­ery. "There have been calls from com­pa­nies and res­i­dents wish­ing to par­tic­i­pate in the project af­ter see­ing the bins in Diego Mar­tin. The re­sponse has been over­whelm­ing­ly pos­i­tive," said Broad­bridge. The project has been high­ly com­mend­ed by its spon­sor, the Green Fund, while its stake­hold­ers, Broad­bridge said, has been a source of en­cour­age­ment. Part of Plas­ti­keep's mis­sion is to ed­u­cate and in­form the pub­lic, com­mu­ni­ties and cor­po­rate en­ti­ties about the im­por­tance of prop­er dis­pos­al and pro­cess­ing of waste. "Em­pow­er­ing peo­ple to shape the con­di­tion of their own en­vi­ron­ment is one of our ob­jec­tives," said Broad­bridge. Sev­en large iron bins were in­stalled through­out the Diego Mar­tin dis­trict last month.

Plas­ti­keep al­so pro­vides door-to-door pick up of plas­tics in some ar­eas. Of the sev­en large and spe­cial­ly de­signed bins, three were placed in schools. Farmer is work­ing fever­ish­ly to have a few more bins in­stalled in Diego Mar­tin be­cause the de­mand is ap­par­ent­ly grow­ing. On May 13, Plas­ti­keep was of­fi­cial­ly launched at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel. The project, fund­ed by the Min­istry of Plan­ning, Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment via its Green Fund, is ad­min­is­tered by the Green­light Net­work, a Trinida­di­an com­mu­ni­ty-based or­gan­i­sa­tion of which Farmer is a mem­ber. A cer­ti­fied grant of $852,281 to un­der­take this project was award­ed by the min­istry.

Keep­ing it clean

Broad­bridge ex­plained that Plas­ti­keep of­fers an op­por­tu­ni­ty to take a step to­wards clean­ing up one's life. "Trinida­di­ans need to start be­ing hon­est with them­selves. They need to look around and ask them­selves if their habits and be­hav­iours are re­al­ly healthy for those around and them­selves." Broad­bridge said re­cy­cling was not just an ac­tion in­volv­ing the im­proved han­dling of waste ma­te­r­i­al, but a chance to be­gin chang­ing peo­ple's mind­set to­wards the en­vi­ron­ment. "Our world is in a state of cri­sis to which the mul­ti­plied ef­fects of in­di­vid­ual ef­forts of­fer the on­ly re­al so­lu­tion." Broad­bridge said the project was geared to­wards sus­tain­able so­cial and eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits for the coun­try. It is ex­pect­ed that the cul­mi­na­tion of the project will re­sult in learn­ing and da­ta that will lend to the pro­mo­tion of fu­ture plas­tic waste dis­pos­al pro­grammes. Broad­bridge could not spec­u­late on a price tag to take the project na­tion­al.

Stu­dents of Dun­ross Prepara­to­ry School armed with plas­tic bot­tles stand near the Plas­ti­keep bin which was in­stalled at the school.

Hats off to Plas­ti­keep

Trevor Williams, CEO of Re­cy­cling In Mo­tion, has tipped its hat to Plas­ti­keep for its en­vi­ron­men­tal preser­va­tion and ini­tia­tive."We are glad to have part­nered with them. This is cer­tain­ly a move in the right di­rec­tion if we want to re­duce the vol­umes of plas­tics de­posit­ed in land­fills." Every year, Re­cy­cling In Mo­tion, a 15-year-old com­pa­ny shreds and ships two mil­lion pounds of plas­tic. Williams was, how­ev­er, un­able to say how many pounds of chipped plas­tic came out of Plas­ti­keep. "It could be a few hun­dred pounds per de­liv­ery. But we are op­ti­mistic that this fig­ure will grow in time." With Plas­ti­keep's dream to go na­tion­al, Williams said his or­gan­i­sa­tion would be more than will­ing to take on the chal­lenge.

How it works

Ex­plain­ing the process, Broad­bridge said about twice week­ly trucks would col­lect the sev­en grades of plas­tic waste which must first be put in­to ded­i­cat­ed trans­par­ent or se­mi-trans­par­ent bags. The col­lect­ed waste will then go to a pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ty such as Re­cy­cling In Mo­tion Ltd in Champs Fleurs where it will be sort­ed, chipped, baled and shipped to places like the Unit­ed States and Asia for re­cy­cling. Plas­tic can be re­cy­cled in­to cloth­ing, car­pet­ing, park bench­es, and many oth­er items. "Plas­tic waste," Broad­bridge said, "should be con­sid­ered a valu­able re­source which may be used through re­cy­cling to pro­duce new and use­ful prod­ucts." Broad­bridge said re­cy­cling does not be­come a fea­si­ble ven­ture un­til plas­tic waste is giv­en a mon­e­tary val­ue, "or un­til down­stream prod­ucts of plas­tic re­cy­cling are di­rect­ly con­nect­ed to the waste col­lec­tion process."

Broad­bridge al­so not­ed that stud­ies have shown that if re­cy­cling achieves even a ten per cent re­cov­ery of the to­tal over­all plas­tic waste, this is con­sid­ered a high yield. This means that a great deal of plas­tic, a prod­uct de­rived chem­i­cal­ly us­ing oil, will go to city dumps and land­fills. When it isn't dis­posed of prop­er­ly, it ends up in rivers, in the sea, on beach­es and at the sides of road­ways. "It is es­ti­mat­ed that there are av­er­age of 15,000 pieces of plas­tic lit­ter float­ing on every square me­tre of wa­ter in the sea. Plas­tic is ex­treme­ly harm­ful to ma­rine life."