KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Of the 129,669 met­ric tonnes of plas­tic T&T im­ports an­nu­al­ly, you can find most of it dis­card­ed on beach­es, rivers, il­le­gal dump­sites and land­fills over time, pol­lut­ing the soil and killing wildlife.

Ac­cord­ing to Glob­al Change Da­ta Lab, on­ly 6,372 met­ric tonnes of plas­tic de­parts through ex­ports, leav­ing 123,297 met­ric tonnes be­hind to cre­ate fur­ther en­vi­ron­men­tal hav­oc. But what if you can use that plas­tic to build a wall at your home, in­stall a park bench, dec­o­rate your yard with a flower pot or even use it as deck floor­ing?

With just one con­crete-plas­tic block cre­at­ed by the Ker­na­ham and Cas­cadoux Women’s Group (KCWG) at their Plas­tic Up­cy­cling and Learn­ing Cen­tre in Man­zanil­la, it saves the en­vi­ron­ment from at least 13 cas­es of pol­lu­tants.

Dur­ing a me­dia tour of the fa­cil­i­ty, the women pre­sent­ed a work­shop built from up­cy­cled plas­tic col­lect­ed from the Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny and iCare.

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Shar­da Ma­habir, Na­tion­al Co­or­di­na­tor of the Unit­ed Na­tions’ Glob­al En­vi­ron­ment Fa­cil­i­ty’s Small Grants Pro­gramme (SGP), the build­ing in­clud­ed ce­ment blocks for­ti­fied with plas­tic and lum­ber up­cy­cled from dis­card­ed plas­tic oil con­tain­ers.

“The doors con­tain about two tonnes of waste-plas­tic con­tain­ers. Each brick con­sists of 312 drink­ing wa­ter bot­tles. The amount of plas­tic in the bricks is five tonnes. The build­ing has sev­en tonnes. A plant pot con­tains from 500 to 2,000 bot­tles. Just imag­ine how much plas­tic this project takes away from the en­vi­ron­ment,” Ma­habir said.

It al­so has the po­ten­tial for pub­lic in­fra­struc­tur­al use, as the cen­tre can pro­duce di­viders strength­ened by plas­tic for high­ways. Ma­habir said it al­so means that if one gets bro­ken be­cause of a col­li­sion, they can re­cy­cle it to make a new one.

The SGP fund­ed project, en­ti­tled “Re­duc­ing En­vi­ron­men­tal Poly­mer (Plas­tics) Pol­lu­tion in Trinidad & To­ba­go,” part­nered with the non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion Fly­ing Tree En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment (FTEM) to es­tab­lish two com­mu­ni­ty-led plas­tics up­cy­cling cen­tres on each is­land.

FTEM di­rec­tor Juan An­drades ex­plained that the build­ing blocks were in­ter­lock­ing and mod­u­lar, sim­i­lar to Lego blocks. They are flex­i­ble and can with­stand weath­er con­di­tions and earth­quakes. They al­so have a high safe­ty rat­ing against fire. Based on the de­sign, the up­cy­cled plas­tic work­shop does not use mor­tar or a bind­ing agent but car­ries fas­ten­ers with a plas­tic beam.

“These un­want­ed plas­tics that we can find in our land­fills, rivers, beach­es hous­es and streets, they come in­to our ma­chin­ery that we retro­fit and built to cre­ate this plas­tic lum­ber. What makes our plas­tic lum­ber dif­fer­ent from oth­er plas­tic lum­ber? Oth­er plas­tic lum­ber im­port­ed in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go is built with good plas­tic. We are bring­ing more garbage in­to the coun­try that we will dis­pose of af­ter a while. Our plas­tic lum­ber, we build with un­want­ed plas­tic,” An­drades said.

If more peo­ple and or­gan­i­sa­tions do­nate plas­tic waste, the pro­duc­tion cost will be low­er, as the cen­tre would not have to seek a sup­ply of raw ma­te­r­i­al.

FTEM co-di­rec­tor God­frey Boodoo said plas­tic lum­ber is al­ready cheap­er than its wood­en coun­ter­parts. It can make doors, floor­ing, sheds and oth­er projects that usu­al­ly use wood. Boodoo said it was not on­ly easy to in­stall but could last for gen­er­a­tions. It al­so does not re­quire treat­ment like wood.

Most of all, they do not have to cut down a tree but use waste that would have oth­er­wise dam­aged the en­vi­ron­ment, as plas­tic can take up to 450 years to de­com­pose.

If some­one wants to build some­thing us­ing plas­tic at their home, they can go to the cen­tre and learn how to car­ry out their projects, elim­i­nat­ing the need for labour costs. An­drades said peo­ple could bring their waste plas­tic, grind and com­bine them with ce­ment and build their de­signs. It is ben­e­fi­cial for fam­i­lies to teach chil­dren not to be as en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly de­struc­tive as the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion, he not­ed.

With the cen­tre near the scenic Man­zanil­la shore­line, An­drades said fam­i­lies can vis­it to cast 10 blocks for their projects, then hit the beach. When its project ends, the cen­tre has trucks and cranes to trans­port the bench­es, which are 1.3 tonnes each and oth­er items.

KCWG pres­i­dent Omatie Gadraj-Ma­habir said the group em­pow­ers women of the two com­mu­ni­ties, mak­ing them fi­nan­cial­ly in­de­pen­dent and con­tribut­ing to the en­vi­ron­ment. As they hope to ex­pand, Gadraj-Ram­per­sad said there are plans to use the up­cy­cling cen­tre to beau­ti­fy the beach­front with ac­com­mo­da­tions and up­grade the pro­duce stalls lin­ing the Man­zanil­la Ma­yaro Road.

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