Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment, Kennedy Swarats­ingh, has called for a fun­da­men­tal shift in T&T’s busi­ness cul­ture, urg­ing the pri­vate sec­tor to em­brace in­no­va­tion, as he hailed the rub­ber crumb dis­tri­b­u­tion by the Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute (Cariri) as a step in the right di­rec­tion.

This is part of Cariri’s on­go­ing ef­forts to pro­mote sus­tain­able in­no­va­tion and cir­cu­lar econ­o­my so­lu­tions in T&T.

The event, which was held on Wednes­day, for­mal­ly dis­trib­uted rub­ber crumb ma­te­r­i­al to a se­lect group of lo­cal com­pa­nies to ex­per­i­ment with, test and in­te­grate in­to their ex­ist­ing or pro­posed busi­ness op­er­a­tions, with a view to de­vel­op­ing in­no­v­a­tive, com­mer­cial­ly vi­able and en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly re­spon­si­ble prod­ucts.

Swarats­ingh said that by en­abling lo­cal en­ter­pris­es to ex­plore prac­ti­cal ap­pli­ca­tions for re­cy­cled prod­ucts, this stim­u­lat­ed en­tre­pre­neur­ship, en­cour­aged cir­cu­lar econ­o­my prac­tices, and re­duced waste through val­ue-added util­i­sa­tion.

“This is a bold step in a gen­er­al busi­ness cul­ture where tra­di­tion and play­ing safe seems to be the modus operan­di. We will nev­er at­tain our full po­ten­tial con­tin­u­ing to do busi­ness that way. In ad­di­tion, re­search and de­vel­op­ment is al­so a fea­ture sole­ly lack­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he urged.

Swarats­ingh al­so high­light­ed the se­vere risks his­tor­i­cal­ly posed by waste tyres, not­ing they con­tribute to flood­ing, fa­cil­i­tate fires that are no­to­ri­ous­ly dif­fi­cult to ex­tin­guish, and serve as breed­ing grounds for the Aedes ae­gyp­ti mos­qui­to, as he em­pha­sised that the ini­tia­tive rep­re­sents a strate­gic in­ter­sec­tion of en­vi­ron­men­tal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion.

Cariri’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Hans-Erich Schulz, who al­so spoke, said the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s pri­ma­ry man­date is to bridge the gap be­tween sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery and tan­gi­ble so­lu­tions.

“We see chal­lenges dif­fer­ent­ly,” Schulz stat­ed, not­ing that the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of dis­card­ed tyres—long a pub­lic health and en­vi­ron­men­tal risk—is now be­ing viewed as a high-po­ten­tial raw ma­te­r­i­al.

The dis­trib­uted rub­ber crumb is ex­pect­ed to be utilised in the de­vel­op­ment of di­verse prod­ucts, rang­ing from con­struc­tion pavers and safe­ty mats to spe­cialised floor tiles.

Schulz al­so pledged that Cariri would pro­vide on­go­ing tech­ni­cal sup­port to help re­cip­i­ents scale their pro­to­types in­to com­mer­cialised prod­ucts.