KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny (SWM­COL) is en­cour­ag­ing the pub­lic to do a bet­ter job when it comes to the en­vi­ron­ment.

SWM­COL’s Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO) Sean De Souza said all three land­fills across the coun­try are al­most filled to ca­pac­i­ty and can­not take much more ma­te­r­i­al.

Speak­ing at a project clos­ing sym­po­sium en­ti­tled Catalysing and Con­nect­ing the Cir­cu­lar Econ­o­my in T&T held at Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness yes­ter­day, De Souza called on the Gov­ern­ment to im­ple­ment ad­di­tion­al leg­is­la­tion to treat with waste man­age­ment.

He said he hoped this could hap­pen with­in the six to 12 months.

In Ju­ly, Cab­i­net agreed to three en­vi­ron­men­tal le­gal­i­sa­tion poli­cies.

These in­clude the Na­tion­al Re­cy­cling Pol­i­cy (MRP), the Na­tion­al In­te­grat­ed Sol­id Waste Re­source Man­age­ment pol­i­cy (NISWRMP) and the Bev­er­age Con­tain­er Re­turn De­posit pol­i­cy.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia via tele­phone yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les said the waste man­age­ment poli­cies will make waste be seen as a re­source.

“The three waste man­age­ment poli­cies that were ap­proved by gov­ern­ment a cou­ple months ago will lay the foun­da­tion for an in­te­grat­ed sol­id waste man­age­ment sec­tor in T&T which em­braces the ideals of re­duce, reuse and re­cy­cle. The dis­joint­ed sec­tor, as it stands now, will be trans­formed and man­aged by a State Au­thor­i­ty (SWM­Corp) that will have the au­thor­i­ty of leg­is­la­tion to man­age the sec­tor in a seam­less and in­te­grat­ed man­ner. It will cer­tain­ly ush­er in an era where waste will be seen as a re­source with all the op­por­tu­ni­ties as­so­ci­at­ed with it.”

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, the re­cy­cling pol­i­cy aims to iden­ti­fy de­lib­er­ate ob­jec­tives and pol­i­cy strate­gies to cre­ate a strong, re­silient and cost-ef­fec­tive Na­tion­al Mu­nic­i­pal Sol­id Waste (MSW) Re­cy­cling Sys­tem.

It al­so ad­dress­es the man­age­ment of re­cy­clable ma­te­ri­als from the MSW stream, which in­cludes res­i­den­tial, com­mer­cial and in­sti­tu­tion­al sources.

The NISWRMP seeks to es­tab­lish a pol­i­cy frame­work that builds on the ex­ist­ing foun­da­tion and to pro­vide a na­tion­al­ly agreed di­rec­tion and fo­cus for the next ten years. It ad­dress­es Mu­nic­i­pal Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment (MSWM) and out­lines the vi­sion, ob­jec­tives and pol­i­cy strate­gies of the Gov­ern­ment for the MSW sec­tor.

And, the Bev­er­age Con­tain­er Re­turn De­posit pol­i­cy in­cludes a plan to de­vel­op leg­is­la­tion for a na­tion­al re­cy­cling pro­gramme for bev­er­age con­tain­ers. These con­tan­ers would be the first waste stream to be ad­dressed fol­lowed by oth­er waste streams, in­clud­ing tyres, elec­tri­cal waste, elec­tron­ic equip­ment, used lu­bri­cat­ing oil, or­gan­ic waste, pa­per and card­board and glass and met­als.

Dou­bling down on this, De Souza said as a coun­try, peo­ple can all do their part to re­duce, redi­rect, reuse and re­cy­cle.

He said, “We have three land­fills, 92 hectares, 22 and 12, which are on brink and ba­si­cal­ly can­not take much more ma­te­r­i­al. On av­er­age, we are de­posit­ing 800,000 met­ric tonnes of ma­te­ri­als in­to these land­fills. It’s Beetham, For­res Park in south, and Gua­napo in the east. That can’t con­tin­ue.”

“Every time a cit­i­zen touch­es a garbage bag, they start the process of sol­id waste man­age­ment... We can­not con­tin­ue what we did yes­ter­day and as I said we have that op­por­tu­ni­ty. We have or­gan­i­sa­tions that are go­ing to help us and as we go for­ward, we’re look­ing for­ward to be­ing able to suc­cess­ful­ly chang­ing di­rec­tion and tact in how Trinidad and To­ba­go views that en­vi­ron­ment and mak­ing sure that those prop­er de­ci­sions not just for to­day but what is at stake is the fu­ture.” He added.

DeS­ouza said the goal is for every­one to work to­geth­er to achieve ze­ro waste.

The sym­po­sium placed spot­light on the Crop­per Foun­da­tion’s Cir­cu­lar City pro­gramme which fea­tured a mul­ti-sec­toral ap­proach to ad­dress­ing the coun­try’s waste man­age­ment chal­lenges, with the aim of re­duc­ing plas­tic waste sent to land­fills.

The Bev­er­age Con­tain­ers Bill was first in­tro­duced by then Min­is­ter of the En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources, Gan­ga Singh, on No­vem­ber 20, 2012, near­ly 12 years ago.

The leg­is­la­tion pro­vid­ed for the es­tab­lish­ment of the Bev­er­age Con­tain­ers Ad­vi­so­ry Board and of a de­posit and re­fund sys­tem for bev­er­age con­tain­ers for pre­scribed sizes of bev­er­age con­tain­ers, a regime for the col­lec­tion of bev­er­age con­tain­ers to re­duce their dis­pos­al in­to the en­vi­ron­ment, there­by al­le­vi­at­ing the pol­lu­tion prob­lem and for oth­er re­lat­ed mat­ters.

The re­sult­ing Act was due to come in­to force up­on procla­ma­tion but lapsed.