The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) and the Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (SWM­COL) have ini­ti­at­ed dis­cus­sions to ex­plore greater syn­er­gies be­tween the two or­gan­i­sa­tions on ef­fec­tive waste man­age­ment in T&T. Dur­ing a meet­ing held at the EMA's Head Of­fice in St Clair on Au­gust 17, se­nior of­fi­cials of both agen­cies agreed the re­cent flood­ing cri­sis in south and cen­tral Trinidad has sent a strong sig­nal that man­age­ment of waste in the coun­try need­ed to be bet­ter co­or­di­nat­ed, and that cit­i­zens need­ed to make a con­scious ef­fort to un­der­stand and dis­play sound waste dis­pos­al prac­tices. The meet­ing was chaired by EMA's man­ag­ing di­rec­tor/CEO, Dr Joth Singh, and was at­tend­ed by se­nior EMA man­agers, SWM­COL's CEO, An­tho­ny Taitt, and ex­ec­u­tive man­ag­er, Waste Man­age­ment Ser­vices, Uche Os­u­ji.

Among the pos­si­ble ar­eas of col­lab­o­ra­tion dis­cussed were col­lab­o­ra­tive ed­u­ca­tion and aware­ness projects; stronger lob­by­ing for the pas­sage of waste leg­is­la­tion; pi­lot projects for waste man­age­ment; plas­tic and used tyre re­cy­cling; com­mu­ni­ty ini­tia­tives; and the ex­plo­ration of pub­lic and pri­vate projects for waste man­age­ment. Dr Singh said it had be­come nec­es­sary for agen­cies and or­gan­i­sa­tions with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for en­vi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment to col­lab­o­rate and de­vel­op an ef­fec­tive in­te­grat­ed waste man­age­ment sys­tem for the coun­try. He said he saw the po­ten­tial part­ner­ing with SWM­COL as en­hanc­ing the projects the EMA dis­cussed with the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) some weeks ago.

Both Taitt and Os­u­ji in­di­cat­ed that the largest per­cent­age of land­fill waste came from or­gan­ic sources and plas­tics, and with prop­er ed­u­ca­tion, aware­ness, and com­mu­ni­ty in­cen­tives, this waste stream could be ef­fec­tive­ly man­aged by com­post­ing on a na­tion­al lev­el–an ini­tia­tive Dr Singh high­light­ed had been very suc­cess­ful in oth­er is­lands, such as St Lu­cia and St Vin­cent, on a com­mu­ni­ty lev­el. The EMA and SWM­COL have com­mit­ted to the de­vel­op­ment of a pro­pos­al for a na­tion­al com­post­ing ini­tia­tive, since both agen­cies viewed the val­ue of com­post­ing not on­ly as a way of re­duc­ing or­gan­ic waste flows in­to the land­fills, but al­so as a means of re­duc­ing the de­pen­dence on ar­ti­fi­cial fer­tilis­ers in agri­cul­ture. Com­pos­it­ed nu­tri­ents are rich or­gan­ic ma­te­ri­als that can be ef­fec­tive­ly mixed with soil. The agen­cies al­so dis­cussed the need for the swift pas­sage of the Draft Bev­er­age Con­tain­er Bill, and the strength­en­ing of the Lit­ter Act as leg­isla­tive tools in man­ag­ing peo­ple's ac­tions to­wards waste in the coun­try.