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Thursday, July 10, 2025

A Japanese solution to a T&T problem

by

Guardian Media Limited
630 days ago
20231019

The promise of sup­port from Japan to tack­le this coun­try’s waste dis­pos­al chal­lenges, which are fast ap­proach­ing cri­sis lev­els, is one that lo­cal au­thor­i­ties should grasp with both hands.

Ex­ces­sive waste gen­er­a­tion pos­es threats to T&T’s en­vi­ron­ment and pub­lic health due to steady in­creas­es in the amount of waste gen­er­at­ed from house­holds and in­dus­tri­al ac­tiv­i­ties.

Most Trin­bag­o­ni­ans don’t see it as an ur­gent mat­ter un­til they find them­selves at the mer­cy of the coun­try’s in­ef­fi­cient and out­dat­ed waste col­lec­tion sys­tem, con­front­ed with un­sight­ly piles of garbage and the ac­com­pa­ny­ing stench.

But with the ma­jor land­fills at Beetham, For­res Park and Gua­napo now well past their ex­pi­ra­tion dates and op­er­at­ing with dwin­dling ca­pac­i­ty, the so­lu­tions be­ing of­fered from a re­cy­cling fa­cil­i­ty in Os­a­ki Town, Japan, might just be the kick-start this coun­try needs to adopt more ef­fi­cient, eco-friend­ly ways of deal­ing with waste.

The ur­gency of the sit­u­a­tion and the need to more ag­gres­sive­ly im­ple­ment im­proved sys­tems for col­lec­tion, re­cy­cling and dis­pos­al of waste, well be­yond what is cur­rent­ly avail­able through the Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (SWM­COL) and the var­i­ous re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions, can­not be over­stat­ed.

The cur­rent sys­tems are op­er­at­ing on bor­rowed time.

T&T’s land­fills re­ceive ap­prox­i­mate­ly 700,000 tonnes of waste a year—1,500 to 2,000 tonnes a day—adding up to waste gen­er­a­tion at a per capi­ta rate of 1.5kg, which is ex­ces­sive in a coun­try with a pop­u­la­tion of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1.4 mil­lion.

But for too long on­ly scant at­ten­tion has been paid to the rapid growth in the vol­ume of waste be­ing gen­er­at­ed, par­tic­u­lar­ly the in­creased pro­por­tions of non-biodegrad­able and haz­ardous ma­te­r­i­al.

At the coun­try’s largest land­fill site at Beetham, lo­cat­ed just out­side Port-of-Spain, rapid de­te­ri­o­ra­tion is high­light­ed by the fires which oc­ca­sion­al­ly blan­ket the cap­i­tal in foul-smelling smoke, in­dis­crim­i­nate sal­vaging and the neg­a­tive im­pact on the en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive Ca­roni Swamp.

At the Gua­napo land­fill, shrink­ing ca­pac­i­ty is fur­ther ex­ac­er­bat­ed by the en­croach­ment of squat­ters and oth­er land­fills are not far­ing much bet­ter.

Then there is the il­le­gal dump­ing of waste along the verges of road­ways, va­cant lots and wa­ter­cours­es, con­tribut­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly to flood­ing and pos­ing a con­stant threat to pub­lic health.

Giv­en the ex­tent of the prob­lem, it is wor­ry­ing that there is so lit­tle na­tion­al di­a­logue about it and so lit­tle ef­fort put in­to pro­grammes to ed­u­cate and raise pub­lic aware­ness of the need to re­duce waste and de­vel­op a mind­set for re­cy­cling.

There has been an ef­fort be­tween the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties and SWM­COL to op­er­ate a pub­lic sec­tor re­cy­cling pro­gramme (PSRP) and a ma­te­ri­als re­source re­cov­ery fa­cil­i­ty (MRF) has been in op­er­a­tion at the Gua­napo land­fill for sev­en years, in ad­di­tion to some small-scale re­cy­cling pro­grammes here and there but noth­ing ex­ists at a lev­el ca­pa­ble of trans­form­ing and mod­ernising T&T’s waste man­age­ment sys­tems.

A plan to re­place the woe­ful­ly out­dat­ed sol­id waste mas­ter plan, which is now more than 40 years old, is long over­due.

As the na­tion that birthed a mu­si­cal in­stru­ment from re­cy­cled ma­te­ri­als back in the 20th cen­tu­ry, it de­fies log­ic that T&T is so slow to adopt re­cy­cling prac­tices in oth­er ar­eas of na­tion­al life.

Now, with tech­ni­cal sup­port on of­fer from a coun­try thou­sands of miles away, there is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to fix a prob­lem that has been bro­ken for far too long.

Here’s hop­ing the will ex­ists to bring this project to fruition.

Editorial


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