The Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment’s En­vi­ron­men­tal Pol­i­cy and Plan­ning Di­vi­sion (EP­PD) in part­ner­ship with the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA) and the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA), led a clean-up and da­ta gath­er­ing ex­er­cise along the Fore­shore on Sat­ur­day 17 Sep­tem­ber 2022 where they col­lect­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2720.9lbs of garbage. De­tails fol­low in this press re­lease…

2720.9lbs. That's the whop­ping to­tal weight of garbage col­lect­ed at the Fore­shore on Sat­ur­day 17th Sep­tem­ber 2022. 

The cleanup and da­ta gath­er­ing ex­er­cise at the Fore­shore was led by the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment’s En­vi­ron­men­tal Pol­i­cy and Plan­ning Di­vi­sion (EP­PD) in part­ner­ship with the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA) and the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA), with the sup­port of nu­mer­ous NGOs and com­mu­ni­ty groups as part of In­ter­na­tion­al Coastal Cleanup (ICC) 2022 ob­ser­va­tions.

Of the 2720.9lbs of garbage cat­a­logued and re­moved from the Fore­shore over the week­end, plas­tics were the largest sin­gle iden­ti­fied cat­e­go­ry at 742.6lbs. Glass made up 270.6lbs, tyres 387.2lbs and 1320.5lbs were mis­cel­la­neous items. Some of the un­usu­al items list­ed by vol­un­teers were 'high heels', 'vac­u­um clean­er', 'speak­er', 'car parts' (e.g shield, grill, car­boot rub­ber, dri­ve shaft), 'weave', 'TV cas­ing', 'toast­er oven' and 'suit­case'.

Glob­al­ly, 80% of coast­line pol­lu­tion comes from in­land sources.

Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son urged cit­i­zens to en­joy our beach­es re­spon­si­bly and walk with garbage bags to prop­er­ly dis­pose of their trash when they plan trips, “It’s dis­heart­en­ing when you come and see the en­vi­ron­ment look­ing like this. I want to make a plea, and send a re­minder that we can de­cide as a na­tion when we come to our beach­es that they should be cleaned be­cause it's go­ing to im­pact us all neg­a­tive­ly.”

Be­yond be­ing an eye­sore how­ev­er, Min­is­ter Beck­les-Robin­son added that ma­rine pol­lu­tion threat­ens hu­man health and ma­rine wildlife like sea tur­tles, and al­so neg­a­tive­ly af­fects our tourism prod­uct.

Min­is­ter Beck­les-Robin­son al­so com­mit­ted to fol­low­ing up on the leg­is­la­tion nec­es­sary to deal with bev­er­age con­tain­ers and to find ways to in­vest in pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion strate­gies geared to­wards be­hav­iour change.  She said, “We can­not con­tin­ue col­lect­ing thou­sands of pounds of garbage from our shores as part of this coastal cleanup ex­er­cise every year and be com­fort­able with this.  We must move from a cleaned so­ci­ety to a clean so­ci­ety.”

The ICC is an an­nu­al ex­er­cise by the NGO Ocean Con­ser­van­cy and is the world’s largest vol­un­teer ef­fort to car­ry out beach cleanups and record da­ta on garbage col­lect­ed on coast­lines all around the world. The Caribbean Net­work for In­te­grat­ed Rur­al De­vel­op­ment (CNIRD), is the na­tion­al co­or­di­na­tor for In­ter­na­tion­al Coastal Cleanup in Trinidad and To­ba­go and is sup­port­ed every year by the Plan­ning Min­istry.