A few months ago while run­ning the track as he trained clients at Aranguez Sa­van­nah, fit­ness train­er and en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist Ker­rie-Kim Kir­ton no­ticed co­pi­ous amounts of trash lit­tered around the sa­van­nah’s pe­riph­ery.

Up­on fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion, he found that the sa­van­nah was with­out a sin­gle dis­pos­al bin. So, young Kir­ton de­cid­ed to do some­thing about it.

On Sat­ur­day Sep­tem­ber 7, he, along with friends, fam­i­ly and mem­bers of his small NGO—the Green Cir­cle En­vi­ron­men­tal Com­pa­ny, vis­it­ed the sa­van­nah around 7 am to in­stall three new garbage bins.

The bins are spon­sored by Ro­to­plas­tics Trinidad Ltd, a well-known wa­ter tank provider in T&T.

Spon­sored
garbage bins

Kir­ton met with the San Juan Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion just af­ter Car­ni­val and of­fered to in­stall bins at Aranguez Sa­van­nah. Af­ter nu­mer­ous meet­ings and phone calls, ap­proval was grant­ed for the in­stal­la­tion and the coach and en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist vis­it­ed Ro­to­plas­tics with the in­ten­tion of pur­chas­ing bins for use at the Sa­van­nah.

On let­ting Ro­to­plas­tics’ mar­ket­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive know of the in­tend­ed use for his pur­chase, dis­cus­sions be­gan about spon­sor­ship. The rest is his­to­ry.

Said the young vi­sion­ary: “I al­ways tell my friends ‘if every­one does a lit­tle, no one will have to do a lot’. When I saw what was hap­pen­ing at Aranguez Sa­van­nah, I knew ac­tion was need­ed, and I de­cid­ed I would be the one to take it. I am tru­ly grate­ful that Ro­to­plas­tics saw the val­ue in as­sist­ing my team and I to make Aranguez Sa­van­nah clean­er and green­er.”

Kir­ton hopes to build fur­ther part­ner­ships with cor­po­rate Trinidad in or­der to ex­e­cute more en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly ini­tia­tives.

Al­ready for 2018, the NGO has part­nered with the Sun­to­ry Group and Massy Unit­ed In­sur­ance on cleanups and re­for­esta­tion projects.

More en­vi­ron­men­tal ini­tia­tives are in the pipeline for the or­gan­i­sa­tion in­clud­ing eco-re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and an ocean clean up. To get in­volved, cor­po­rate en­ti­ties can con­tact the or­gan­i­sa­tion via email at the­green­cir­cleec@gmail.com

Green Cir­cle

Foun­da­tion

The Green Cir­cle is an NGO which ex­e­cutes en­vi­ron­men­tal ini­tia­tives with a so­cial twist. Kir­ton ex­plained that the Green Cir­cle was es­tab­lished five years ago to en­cour­age his peers, the par­ty-go­ing pub­lic, to par­tic­i­pate in so­cial­ly re­spon­si­ble ac­tiv­i­ties for the bet­ter­ment of our na­tion and world. The NGO’s Beach Clean pUmP is the best ex­am­ple of this—a par­ty boat cruise with a dif­fer­ence.

An­nu­al­ly, since 2015, Kir­ton has led a cleanup of Scot­land Bay in com­mem­o­ra­tion of In­ter­na­tion­al Coastal Cleanup Day, held an­nu­al­ly on the third Sat­ur­day in Sep­tem­ber across the globe. Event groups like Tribe, Cae­sar’s Army and Scorch, as well cor­po­rate spon­sors Massy Foun­da­tion and Mar­itime Fi­nan­cial Group meet at 6 am un­der his stew­ard­ship and head to the beach aboard the Har­bour Mas­ter to re­move waste left by vis­i­tors.

Af­ter clean­ing, the groups re­turn to the main­land in tra­di­tion­al par­ty-cruise style, with a sense of ac­com­plish­ment hav­ing done some good for our en­vi­ron­ment. In 2018, over 3,000 pounds of garbage was re­moved from Scot­land Bay.

Sep­tem­ber 21 will mark the fifth year of the Beach Clean pUmP cleanup ex­er­cise.