CARISA LEE

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

The Ro­tary Club of Port-of-Spain West and Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP) yes­ter­day launched a US$35,000 project aimed at col­lect­ing plas­tics out of rivers, in an ef­fort to pre­vent flood­ing and curb pol­lu­tion.

In 2022, the Glob­al Change Da­ta Lab said Trinidad and To­ba­go im­ports 129,669 met­ric tonnes of plas­tic an­nu­al­ly.
Un­for­tu­nate­ly, most of the emp­ty plas­tic bot­tles and con­tain­ers nev­er make it to a prop­er bin and in­stead are dis­card­ed in­dis­crim­i­nate­ly and even­tu­al­ly pol­lute the en­vi­ron­ment.

To help curb this prob­lem, the Ro­tary Club and UNDP launched the Riv­er Plas­tic Ex­trac­tion So­lu­tion Project pi­lot at the east­ern bank of the Mar­aval Riv­er yes­ter­day.

En­vi­ron­ment di­rec­tor of the club Frank Teelucks­ingh said they cre­at­ed a boom to col­lect the plas­tics.

“This boom here is go­ing to col­lect plas­tic as it comes down the riv­er dur­ing the rainy sea­son and the dry sea­son as well, and it’s go­ing to di­rect the plas­tic to the edge here where we will take the plas­tic out,” he said.

Teelucks­ingh said a cam­era has been in­stalled to mon­i­tor the ac­cu­mu­lat­ed plas­tics, which will be cleaned and sent to Fly­ing Tree En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment, which is a con­ser­va­tion and re­for­esta­tion non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion. The NGO will then use the plas­tics as build­ing ma­te­ri­als for fur­ni­ture and con­struc­tion.

“One of those park bench­es that Fly­ing Tree can make from plas­tics from here will take about 60,000 bot­tles,” Teelucks­ingh ex­plained.

He said once the pi­lot was suc­cess­ful, they would tack­le oth­er wa­ter­ways across the coun­try.

Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son said the Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to mak­ing the nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment a safer clean­er space.

She not­ed that the Waste Man­age­ment Rules 2021 and the Waste Man­age­ment (FEES) Reg­u­la­tions, 2021 took ef­fect on May 31, 2022.

The min­is­ter al­so called on the pub­lic to take per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty when it comes to dis­pos­ing of their plas­tics, just as they do when they vis­it oth­er coun­tries.

“The ques­tion I ask my­self is it so dif­fi­cult for us when we go to beach­es and rivers to walk with a bag and sim­ply put our items and take it with us if we don’t see a bin?” she asked.

Beck­les-Robin­son called on cit­i­zens to work with the Gov­ern­ment and oth­er bod­ies as they ad­dress the is­sue of plas­tic pol­lu­tion and oth­er is­sues re­lat­ing to the en­vi­ron­ment.