This is the sec­ond part of Guardian Me­dia Ltd se­ries on re­cy­cling by mar­ket­ing man­ag­er of Resin Con­vert­ers Ltd GER­ARD CHARLES. Last week, Charles said im­ages of plas­tic prod­ucts block­ing drains and rivers, and de­posits of plas­tic de­bris float­ing or beached along our shore­lines are pow­er­ful icons that as­sail us as we go about our dai­ly lives.

This week, Charles warns that if we con­tin­ue to ne­glect our en­vi­ron­ment, we may find our­selves in such a mess that the Gov­ern­ment will be forced to im­ple­ment dra­con­ian mea­sures to ad­dress this mon­u­men­tal waste prob­lem and its con­se­quences.

Sud­den and dra­con­ian mea­sures to ad­dress the is­sue of plas­tic waste will not have the buy-in of all in­ter­est­ed par­ties, as it is dif­fi­cult to de­sign and im­ple­ment a work­ing sys­tem that eq­ui­tably al­lo­cates re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to all in­volved ac­cord­ing to their con­tri­bu­tion to this prob­lem.

This chal­lenge is in fact the gen­e­sis of the Bot­tle Bill leg­is­la­tion un­der con­sid­er­a­tion by our Par­lia­ment which is the pre­ferred method­ol­o­gy that has been for­mu­lat­ed by our Gov­ern­ment so far to ad­dress this prob­lem. Resin Con­vert­ers Ltd has ex­ten­sive­ly re­searched this prob­lem and has come up with a tech­ni­cal­ly vi­able, cost-ef­fec­tive and so­cial­ly re­spon­si­ble so­lu­tion.

It will not on­ly be able to dis­pose of plas­tic prod­ucts that are made and or con­sumed lo­cal­ly, but will al­so have the ad­di­tion­al flex­i­bil­i­ty to col­lect and con­sume all the oth­er plas­tics that are avail­able on our mar­ket. In­deed, if our pro­pos­al is ac­cept­ed and prop­er­ly im­ple­ment­ed, it's con­ceiv­able that we can even­tu­al­ly con­sume so much re­cy­cled plas­tic ma­te­r­i­al that we may even have to im­port plas­tic waste from Cari­com or oth­er re­gion­al sources, as the po­ten­tial de­mand for prod­ucts will be so great.

The plas­tic-re­cy­cling process that is be­ing pro­posed has al­ready found world­wide recog­ni­tion and thus is not an un­tried method­ol­o­gy that would have in­de­ter­mi­nate re­sults, as it is al­ready in use in a mul­ti­tude of ap­pli­ca­tions world­wide. This plas­tics re­cy­cling in­no­va­tion has the unique abil­i­ty to com­bine a wide va­ri­ety of dif­fer­ent plas­tics un­der con­sid­er­a­tion in­to a ho­moge­nous mix­ture (co-min­gling) that can be mould­ed in­to a num­ber of in­dus­tri­al prod­ucts that are al­ready in com­mon use or have new us­es in the lo­cal mar­ket.

Ini­tial­ly, we have iden­ti­fied a num­ber of prod­uct pos­si­bil­i­ties that have promise, as they can be made and con­sumed lo­cal­ly in large quan­ti­ties and can be com­pet­i­tive­ly pro­duced us­ing this process:

• Fen­ce­posts for in­dus­tri­al and res­i­den­tial use

• Plas­tic fab­ri­cat­ed pal­lets for stor­age and ware­hous­ing of goods

• Wa­ter-me­ter cov­ers

• Plas­tic lum­ber

• Out­door park fur­ni­ture and play­grounds

• Out­door rail­ings

• Jet­ty and pier fab­ri­ca­tion com­po­nents, har­bour rail­ings

• Gen­er­al con­struc­tion and fab­ri­ca­tion

• Poles

• An­i­mal stalls

• Fruit tree sup­ports

• Com­post bins

• Pro­tec­tion bar­ri­ers

• Coastal pro­tec­tion against ero­sion

• Sound in­su­la­tion walls

• Earth damming

• Grass pave­ments

• Gar­den sheds

• Open-air ta­bles

• Park bench­es and out­door fur­ni­ture

• Flow­er­pots

In ad­di­tion, this process can pro­duce tech­no­log­i­cal­ly su­pe­ri­or prod­ucts from waste plas­tics that are re­sis­tant to weath­er­ing, de­cay and rot, light in weight and com­pet­i­tive­ly priced.

To be con­tin­ued