As Trinidad and To­ba­go’s three ma­jor land­fills buck­le un­der the pres­sure of mil­lions of tonnes of waste, the so­lu­tion is be­ing sought halfway across the world in Os­a­ki Town, Japan.

It’s a scenic view as you dri­ve through the small town. Through the right win­dow of the bus, hard­ly vis­i­ble to the naked eye, a vol­cano erupts on a moun­tain. Plumes of smoke are all that can be seen bil­low­ing out of the moun­tain top.

On the left side, sprawl­ing fields of green­ery that at­tract the eye. The trop­i­cal weath­er isn’t too far from what the Caribbean en­joys.

This is a town not too un­fa­mil­iar with Trinidad and To­ba­go, af­ter all, it host­ed this coun­try’s Olympic del­e­ga­tion dur­ing the Tokyo 2020 Games that took place in Ju­ly 2021.

An 80-minute flight from the cap­i­tal, Os­a­ki of­fi­cials in charge of the town’s fa­mous waste man­age­ment sys­tems have been en­gag­ing of­fi­cials from this coun­try to ad­dress the ur­gent is­sue of over­loaded land­fills.

It’s been a year since Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les told Guardian Me­dia the three land­fills cur­rent­ly in op­er­a­tion were close to ca­pac­i­ty. The rev­e­la­tion brought the con­ver­sa­tion of the state of T&T’s re­cy­cling pro­gramme back in­to the lime­light.

In late June this year, The As­so­ci­a­tion for Pro­mo­tion of In­ter­na­tion­al Co­op­er­a­tion (APIC) host­ed of­fi­cials re­lat­ed to waste man­age­ment from the twin-is­land re­pub­lic for tours of Japan­ese fa­cil­i­ties and waste man­age­ment train­ing. The four par­tic­i­pants were from the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties as well as the Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (SWM­COL).

“It is very im­por­tant for a coun­try like T&T where the land is very lim­it­ed and the pop­u­la­tion is grow­ing so those land­fills can be filled up very quick­ly,” Ka­su­mi Fu­ji­ta told Guardian Me­dia dur­ing a tour of the Soo Re­cy­cling Cen­tre yes­ter­day. A mem­ber of the Os­a­ki Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals (SDGs) Pro­mo­tion Coun­cil, Fu­ji­ta added, “It is very im­por­tant you start ear­li­er on re­cy­cling.”

The Os­a­ki SDGs Pro­mo­tion Coun­cil has tout­ed sep­a­rat­ing or­gan­ic waste and re­cy­cling as key el­e­ments in its fight to ex­tend the life of its land­fill. On the bot­tom floor, an old man could be seen sep­a­rat­ing met­als in­to hard iron, alu­mini­um, cop­per, etc in box­es in front of him. On the first floor, three work­ers sep­a­rate plas­tic bot­tles while some dis­tance away, two men re­move met­al caps from glass bot­tles be­fore it is sent to re­cy­cling.

The fa­cil­i­ty was built in 2004 at a cost of $US2 mil­lion. Fu­ji­ta is aware of the chal­lenges be­ing faced in T&T hav­ing al­so ad­dressed the of­fi­cials ear­li­er this year.

Ac­cord­ing to SWM­COL, Trinidad’s land­fills re­ceive ap­prox­i­mate­ly 700,000 tonnes of waste per year (1,500 to 2,000 tonnes per day) com­pris­ing 66 per cent house­hold waste, and 33 per cent of in­dus­tri­al, com­mer­cial, and in­sti­tu­tion­al ori­gin.

Fu­ji­ta in­sist­ed sep­a­rat­ing or­gan­ic waste is the way to go. “The or­gan­ic waste means kitchen waste so if we com­post them, we will have a huge re­duc­tion of waste that will go to the land­fill,” she ex­plained.

She said it will re­quire cit­i­zens to as­sist, “I don’t think it is very dif­fi­cult. It is a mat­ter of how the coun­try it­self can cre­ate sys­tems for the so­ci­ety. We might need some help from the cit­i­zens. We might need cit­i­zens in­volved in sep­a­ra­tion but I be­lieve it’s more of a gov­ern­ment re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to con­struct a type of con­crete sys­tem where cit­i­zens can feel free to par­tic­i­pate in.”

Pub­lic Re­la­tions Di­rec­tor of Os­a­ki SDGs Pro­mo­tion Coun­cil, Ru­ru Nak­a­ga­ki said, “With Trinidad and To­ba­go, it’s cur­rent­ly a new at­tempt. This year we had a few del­e­gates from the gov­ern­ment to first learn about the sit­u­a­tion in Os­a­ki, and we al­so would like to learn how things are done in T&T and we are go­ing to dis­cuss how we can im­ple­ment the sys­tem.”