Trinidad Ce­ment Lim­it­ed (TCL), fo­cused on sus­tain­able fresh­wa­ter re­sources and ef­fec­tive waste man­age­ment so­lu­tions, led a coastal clean-up in its com­mu­ni­ty last Sat­ur­day ahead of World Wa­ter Day.

TCL’s team of em­ploy­ee vol­un­teers and their fam­i­lies joined the Clax­ton Bay Fish­er­men's As­so­ci­a­tion and Caribbean Net­work for In­te­grat­ed Rur­al De­vel­op­ment (CNIRD), the lo­cal af­fil­i­ate of In­ter­na­tion­al Coastal Clean-up (ICC) to re­move 926 pounds of waste from the Clax­ton Bay coast­line.

Clax­ton Bay con­tains nat­ur­al wa­ter­ways and ma­rine habi­tats, such as man­grove forests and a coast­line that sup­ports a fish­ing in­dus­try. TCL is com­mit­ted to serv­ing its op­er­at­ing com­mu­ni­ties and pre­serv­ing the en­vi­ron­ment through var­i­ous ini­tia­tives aimed at pro­tect­ing these re­sources.

Over 30 per cent of the waste col­lect­ed will be re­cy­cled. A sig­nif­i­cant amount of plas­tic waste will be co-processed in the com­pa­ny’s kilns as part of an up­com­ing tri­al to use waste as an al­ter­na­tive source of fu­el across TCL’s op­er­a­tions.

At the event, TCL's gen­er­al man­ag­er Gon­za­lo Rue­da Castil­lo em­pha­sised the com­pa­ny's com­mit­ment to sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment, stat­ing “Our work in pre­serv­ing the en­vi­ron­ment is con­tin­u­ous. Clean­ing coast­lines is just one part; it re­quires on­go­ing ded­i­ca­tion and ef­fort from every­one”.

Fran­cis­co Aguil­era, TCL Group’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, ac­knowl­edged the con­tri­bu­tions of vol­un­teers, say­ing, "It is en­cour­ag­ing to see the TCL team and the fish­er­men from Clax­ton Bay col­lab­o­rat­ing to pos­i­tive­ly af­fect the shared ecosys­tem. This area is our home, and be­ing near to our fa­cil­i­ty, we are par­tic­u­lar­ly pleased to con­tribute pos­i­tive­ly to our com­mu­ni­ty. To­geth­er, we are fos­ter­ing a clean­er and bet­ter en­vi­ron­ment for every­one”.

World Wa­ter Day, ob­served an­nu­al­ly on March 22, high­lights the im­por­tance of fresh­wa­ter and pro­motes sus­tain­able man­age­ment of wa­ter re­sources to ad­dress the glob­al wa­ter cri­sis, sup­port­ing Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goal #6: en­sur­ing wa­ter and san­i­ta­tion for all by 2030.