Carib Glass­works Lim­it­ed (CGL) and the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) teams have been com­plet­ing a se­ries of vis­its to Carib Glass­works Matu­ra Sand Plant, in prepa­ra­tion for its up­com­ing quar­ry re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion project.

A state­ment from the com­pa­ny said this project was in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the EMA through its In­te­grat­ing Wa­ter, Land and Ecosys­tems Man­age­ment-IWE­co TT ini­tia­tive.

It said in 2017, Carib Glass­works Lim­it­ed was ap­proached by the EMA as one of the pri­vate sec­tor quar­ries, to in­clude un­der the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion com­po­nent of the IWE­co TT project. Carib Glass­works Lim­it­ed was the on­ly man­u­fac­tur­er of glass pack­ag­ing in the Caribbean and was the first pri­vate­ly man­aged quar­ry to part­ner with the EMA and GEF IWE­co TT ini­tia­tive, to es­tab­lish a one-hectare demon­stra­tion re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion site at its sand quar­ry, in low­er Matu­ra.

All the glass bot­tles pro­duced at the fac­to­ry used sil­i­ca which had been mined from this quar­ry. CGL had been op­er­at­ing a sand mine and pro­cess­ing plant at Matu­ra since 1972.

IWE­co TT worked with two non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions (NGOs), the Trust for Sus­tain­able Liveli­hoods and IAMove­ment in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme-Small Grants Pro­gramme to de­vel­op a quar­ry re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion train­ing pro­gramme.

Main­ly un­em­ployed women from com­mu­ni­ties of Va­len­cia to San­gre Grande un­der­went sev­er­al months of train­ing fo­cused on the­o­ret­i­cal and prac­ti­cal quar­ry re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion tech­niques.

The IWE­co TT Quar­ry Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cham­pi­ons learned about site prepa­ra­tion and plant­i­ng; cre­ation of check dams and fire trac­ing; nurs­ery de­vel­op­ment and for­est species prop­a­ga­tion; top­soil con­ser­va­tion and man­age­ment; mulching and soil sta­bil­i­sa­tion and ero­sion mit­i­ga­tion tech­niques.

The first three demon­stra­tion sites un­der IWE­co TT were es­tab­lished at Na­tion­al Quar­ries Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed’s sand and grav­el quar­ry in Tu­rure.

These tech­niques would be repli­cat­ed at CGL’s sand quar­ry demon­stra­tion re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion site.

The over­all ob­jec­tive of IWE­co TT was to re­duce and re­verse land degra­da­tion as­so­ci­at­ed with quar­ry op­er­a­tions, at se­lect­ed quar­ry site(s) in North East of Trinidad. The project aimed to re­store nat­ur­al veg­e­ta­tion, re­duce sed­i­men­ta­tion and flood risk, and re­store the eco­log­i­cal func­tion of ex­haust­ed or aban­doned quar­ry pits with en­gage­ments from the sec­tors.

In 2019, as part of Carib Glass­works’ con­tin­ued com­mit­ment to the en­vi­ron­ment, which they demon­strat­ed for over 40 years as the lead­ing re­cy­cler in the re­gion; Carib Glass­works would be re­ha­bil­i­tat­ing one hectare of its sand mine through a mix of in­ter­ven­tions.

These in­ter­ven­tions would in­clude spe­cif­ic plants for species en­rich­ments, the use of the ve­tiv­er plant for soil and slope re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and the in­stal­la­tion of live check dams.

This was part one of CGL’s sand plant re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and in 2020, Carib Glass­works would be re­for­est­ing an­oth­er one hectare of the Matu­ra sand mine.