KALAIN HO­SEIN

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s land­fills are about to get much-need­ed ease as a new re­cy­cling part­ner­ship has been launched by Nestlé Trinidad and To­ba­go and Every Bot­tle Back Trinidad and To­ba­go (EBBTT). This part­ner­ship will al­low EBBTT to re­cy­cle Tetra Pak pack­ag­ing, the car­tons hold­ing many of Nestlé’s prod­ucts, like juice and milk. Nestlé, through this new re­la­tion­ship, is aim­ing to re­duce its car­bon foot­print and the amount of waste sent to land­fills.

In a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia, “Aligned to our com­mit­ment to re­duc­ing the im­pact of our pack­ag­ing on the en­vi­ron­ment, we are in sup­port of cre­at­ing a cir­cu­lar econ­o­my in Trinidad and To­ba­go. We rec­og­nize that we must do our part in dri­ving wide­spread re­cy­cling of our pack­ag­ing ma­te­r­i­al and there­by cre­at­ing a more sus­tain­able plan­et,” shared Jo­sué de la Maza, Nestlé’s Mar­ket Head of the An­glo-Dutch Caribbean Re­gion.

The part­ner­ship was for­mal­ized in March 2023 as part of a joint Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing be­tween both en­ti­ties.

EBBTT was launched in May 2022 as a col­lab­o­ra­tive part­ner­ship be­tween Blue Wa­ters Prod­ucts Ltd., Caribbean Bot­tlers Trinidad and To­ba­go Ltd. and Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd. to dri­ve re­cy­cling aware­ness and reuse of pack­ag­ing ma­te­ri­als na­tion­wide. The ini­tia­tive is al­so sup­port­ed by New Age Re­cy­cling, par­tial­ly fund­ed by the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank In­no­va­tion Lab­o­ra­to­ry (IDB-LAB).

Ac­cord­ing to Stu­art Co­zi­er, Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of EBBTT, “When we launched last year, we were hop­ing to move be­yond the pi­lot phase for Port of Spain, and since its in­cep­tion over nine months ago, we have col­lect­ed al­most 3 mil­lion plas­tic bot­tles which shows that this is some­thing that the pop­u­la­tion is ex­cit­ed about. Now that we have in­clud­ed Tetra Pak as an­oth­er lay­er of col­lec­tion to this ini­tia­tive, we are hop­ing that we can ex­pand the range of ma­te­ri­als col­lect­ed just as strong­ly as we did with the plas­tic bot­tles. Nestlé join­ing us on this jour­ney sup­ports the de­vel­op­ment of a more in­clu­sive sus­tain­abil­i­ty agen­da to help save our plan­et.”

He con­tin­ued, “We be­lieve that it is part of the broad­er re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of busi­ness­es, NGOs, and the gov­ern­ment to tack­le the wide­spread glob­al is­sue of waste re­duc­tion and reuse.”

In an in­ter­view, Co­zi­er al­so ex­plained his rea­son­ing be­hind EBBTT’s op­er­a­tions. “Ide­al­ly, to re­cov­er every sin­gle plas­tic con­tain­er sold to con­sumers in Trinidad. As every­one knows, we have a big prob­lem with waste dis­pos­al of plas­tic bot­tles. Specif­i­cal­ly, we see it every year when the rains come; all the drains fill up, there’s flood­ing, you see Blue Wa­ters, you see Coke, Jaleel, float­ing on top of every­thing. So one of the things we want to get rid of that is­sue.”

Nestlé, one of EBBTT’s cor­po­rate spon­sors, has award­ed TT $340,000 to the ini­tia­tive. As a re­sult of Nestlé’s spon­sor­ship, EBBTT will now in­clude the col­lec­tion of Tetra Pak pack­ag­ing as part of its col­lec­tion strat­e­gy, com­menc­ing April 2023. Fo­cused on col­lect­ing re­cy­clable PET/HDPE con­tain­ers and Tetra Pak bev­er­age con­tain­ers, the pro­gram in­volves the dis­tin­guish­ing fac­tor of its de­posit-re­fund sys­tem, where cit­i­zens re­ceive five cents for each bot­tle dropped off at col­lec­tion cen­tres.

De la Maza added, “There­fore, we are in­vest­ing in the EBBTT Ini­tia­tive to cov­er costs as­so­ci­at­ed with the col­lec­tion of Tetra Pak con­tain­ers. It is our hope that one day, the knowl­edge and part­ner­ships forged through this project and sim­i­lar en­deav­ours, will even­tu­al­ly build bridges to new busi­ness en­ter­pris­es and lead to an eco-friend­lier en­vi­ron­ment for the coun­try.”

The re­cy­cling move­ment isn’t hap­pen­ing in a si­lo – a com­mon crit­i­cism of ini­tia­tives launched in Trinidad and To­ba­go. The Crop­per Foun­da­tion is lead­ing a new­ly es­tab­lished Na­tion­al Cam­paign Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee, bring­ing to­geth­er key stake­hold­ers from the pri­vate sec­tor, gov­ern­ment and non-prof­it agen­cies to tack­le the coun­try’s waste man­age­ment is­sues.

Ac­cord­ing to Omar Mo­hammed, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer at The Crop­per Foun­da­tion, “As an NGO, we’re al­ways ex­cit­ed about the prospects of col­lab­o­ra­tion; it’s the on­ly way we know how to work ef­fec­tive­ly. We hope this Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee could be a har­bin­ger of re­al col­lab­o­ra­tion and trans­paren­cy among or­ga­ni­za­tions who share com­mon in­ter­ests and goals for im­prov­ing waste man­age­ment, pre­vent­ing si­los and du­pli­ca­tion of ef­forts.”

EBBTT Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Co­zi­er al­so ex­plained that they’ve re­al­ized there is a great de­mand for re­cy­cling in Trinidad and To­ba­go, but there hasn’t been a con­sis­tent av­enue for it. The pub­lic can re­turn their Tetra Pak Pack­ag­ing (car­tons or milk/juice box­es) to Every Bot­tle Back TT Col­lec­tion Cen­tre at 40 Char­lotte Street, Port of Spain. More in­for­ma­tion on the lo­ca­tions of Eco Bins is avail­able on their web­site or so­cial me­dia plat­forms.