Bo­bie-lee Dixon

At­trac­tive, huge ab­stract-type-look­ing or­na­ments made from re­cy­cled plas­tic drew peo­ple to the Re­cy­cling in Mo­tion booth at the re­cent Sus­tain­able Tourism Con­fer­ence at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain.

"I have had many peo­ple ask me to pur­chase these but they are not for sale. We just show­case them to show that cre­ativ­i­ty al­so ex­ists in re­cy­cling," said Trevor Williams, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor at Re­cy­cling in Mo­tion.

The Champs Fleurs-based or­gan­i­sa­tion which al­so has of­fices in Guyana, St Lu­cia and Bar­ba­dos, has been in the busi­ness of re­cy­cling plas­tic since the mid-90s.

Williams said he was al­ways a "suck­er" for a clean en­vi­ron­ment and af­ter liv­ing in Cana­da for most of his life where strict en­vi­ron­men­tal laws are in place, he de­cid­ed to come back home and set up a waste man­age­ment com­pa­ny that would main­ly re­cy­cle plas­tics.

That was 20 years ago.

"I came back here and start­ed the com­pa­ny. I thought I could come back and im­pact the cul­ture–change the dy­nam­ics of how re­cy­cling was be­ing ap­proached at the time," said Williams.

He be­gan col­lect­ing plas­tics from man­u­fac­tur­ers and ship­ping them abroad to oth­er com­pa­nies he was af­fil­i­at­ed with, which would re­cy­cle the plas­tics in­to prod­ucts that can re­turn on the mar­ket.

The com­pa­ny, which is self-fund­ed and has a Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance (CEC) from the EMA, has been able to stop three mil­lion pounds of plas­tic from reach­ing the land­fill an­nu­al­ly, ac­cord­ing to Williams.

But he said soon, this might be no more as the com­pa­ny is in need of ad­di­tion­al fund­ing for sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

He said be­cause of lack of leg­is­la­tion on the gov­ern­ment's part to pass the Bev­er­age Con­tain­er Bill (Bot­tle Bill), com­pa­nies like his have been forced to shut down.

"This is no easy busi­ness to run, es­pe­cial­ly when it is be­ing fund­ed by your own pock­et. With­out ma­te­r­i­al reach­ing the com­pa­ny, how can rev­enue be gen­er­at­ed? How can work­ers be paid," he asked.

"If they pass the bill then there would be a re­turn on bot­tles. This would en­cour­age the pub­lic to save them in­stead of dis­card­ing them in­cor­rect­ly, and com­pa­nies re­cy­cling plas­tic would get a con­tin­u­ous sup­ply of ma­te­r­i­al. It would al­so cut cost for man­u­fac­tur­ers as they won't have to pay dump­ing fees any­more," ex­plained Williams.

He said the com­pa­ny has met with gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials on many oc­ca­sions to raise the is­sue and are wait­ing for ac­tion to be tak­en–leg­is­la­tion and poli­cies to be made so that busi­ness­es like his can sur­vive.

"Look an­oth­er re­cy­cling com­pa­ny had to close down re­cent­ly be­cause of lack of fund­ing. There is lit­er­al­ly no type of fi­nan­cial sup­port from the gov­ern­ment for com­pa­nies like this, but they keep talk­ing about go­ing for green. Go­ing for green how?"

Williams said he is hop­ing that the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors would get in­volved and take this se­ri­ous­ly be­cause in­ap­pro­pri­ate dump­ing of waste–what­ev­er kind, will cost mankind a high price in the long run.

"All I am ask­ing and oth­er com­pa­nies in this busi­ness, is that leg­is­la­tion is made so that we can con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing a much need­ed ser­vice. It is not about mak­ing mon­ey, but pro­tect­ing the en­vi­ron­ment and en­sur­ing that every­body is ed­u­cat­ed about the im­por­tance of keep­ing a healthy en­vi­ron­ment," said Williams.

When con­tact­ed, com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer at the Min­istry of the En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources, Avan­ti Su­per­sad, said the Bev­er­age Con­tain­er Bill had not been for­got­ten. She said Min­is­ter Gan­ga Singh laid the bill in Sen­ate on No­vem­ber 20, 2012.

"At the time, sev­er­al amend­ments were placed be­fore the Sen­ate and af­ter dis­cus­sions from all sides, it was agreed that the mat­ter would be ad­journed to a fur­ther date to al­low for the mem­bers to fur­ther dis­cuss the amend­ments and the pos­si­ble changes to the Bill," said Su­per­sad.

She said the mat­ter is still on­go­ing and it is ex­pect­ed that it will be dis­cussed at the Sen­ate short­ly.

NGO, It's Up to Me En­vi­ron­men­tal, lo­cat­ed in Port-of-Spain, has been col­lect­ing waste from thou­sands of homes and schools across T&T for the past four years. On March 1, it was forced to close the build­ing from which it op­er­ates in the Sea Lots area, due to lack of fund­ing. While it con­tin­ued its col­lec­tion ser­vices with the help of sol­id waste man­age­ment com­pa­ny (SWM­COL), which is cur­rent­ly pro­vid­ing them with a stor­age fa­cil­i­ty, that too, had to be halt­ed on April 26, again, be­cause of lack of fund­ing. The com­pa­ny re­cy­cles glass, plas­tic, alu­minum, cans, card­board and pa­per and have at­tract­ed over 4,000 cus­tomers since it was es­tab­lished in 2010. They al­so pro­vide em­ploy­ment for ten mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty in which they are based, and they do it with­out the help of the gov­ern­ment. On the com­pa­ny's Face­book page they have even post­ed a pe­ti­tion tar­get­ed at Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and have urged the pub­lic to sign in sup­port of the com­pa­ny.

In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view the or­gan­i­sa­tion's pres­i­dent John Lewis, he said with the lim­it­ed re­sources the com­pa­ny has, it has been un­able to main­tain month­ly rent de­posits and salaries for em­ploy­ees. He said the board mem­bers have ex­haust­ed all their funds help­ing to keep the com­pa­ny afloat.

"Cus­tomers are call­ing and we have to tell them we can­not help them–that is not the plan we had for this or­gan­i­sa­tion when it start­ed," said Lewis.

He point­ed out, last year the com­pa­ny was hop­ing get fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance from the Green Fund to pur­chase spe­cial­ty trucks from the UK to sep­a­rate waste ma­te­r­i­al and pre­pare it for the re­cy­cling cen­tre–to date there is on­ly one truck avail­able.

He said the in­ac­tion by the gov­ern­ment to move quick­ly on the Bev­er­age Con­tain­er Bill, has pre­vent­ed them from get­ting fund­ing.

Lewis hopes the pe­ti­tion will get the Prime Min­is­ter's at­ten­tion, as he be­lieves she may not be ful­ly aware of the is­sues re­cy­cling com­pa­nies face. He is al­so of the view, the pe­ti­tion will high­light how many peo­ple still care about pro­tect­ing and sav­ing the en­vi­ron­ment.

You can read more about It's Up to Me En­vi­ron­men­tal in an up­com­ing full ar­ti­cle in the T&T Guardian.

For more in­for­ma­tion vis­it their Face­book page, It's Up to Me En­vi­ron­men­tal or con­tact 624-0063.

�2 For more in­for­ma­tion on Re­cy­cling in mo­tion, con­tact 675-7465/789-7945 or send emails to re­cy­cling­in­mo­tion@hot­mail.com