Charles Kong Soo

charles.kong­soo@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Pen­ne­lope Beck­les says the new Bev­er­age Con­tain­er Bill with pri­vate sec­tor buy-in will of­fer mon­e­tary in­cen­tives to cit­i­zens to re­cy­cle plas­tic and glass bot­tles.

A to­tal of 2,721 pounds of garbage was col­lect­ed from along the Fore­shore, Au­drey Jef­fers High­way, on Sat­ur­day by more than 250 vol­un­teers host­ed by the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment’s En­vi­ron­men­tal Pol­i­cy and Plan­ning Di­vi­sion TT, with sev­er­al or­gan­i­sa­tions and NGOs par­tic­i­pat­ing, such as the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty, In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs, and the Basel Con­ven­tion Re­gion­al Cen­tre-Caribbean.

The ex­er­cise was led by Beck­les.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Beck­les said “The Gov­ern­ment has to do its work. I spoke with the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties (Mar­vin Gon­za­les) who is re­spon­si­ble for the Bev­er­age Con­tain­er Bill.

“They have com­plet­ed all the con­sul­ta­tions, went to the pri­vate sec­tor with the pub­lic sec­tor and with all par­ties in­volved.

“There was a pre­vi­ous Bev­er­age Con­tain­er Bill, there were some con­cerns, they have re­vis­it­ed those con­cerns and had con­sul­ta­tions.

“They’re just about reached the stage up­on com­ple­tion of the pol­i­cy and the new Bev­er­age Con­tain­er Bill and hope­ful­ly there is go­ing to be full sup­port.”

She said there will be val­ue on the bot­tles that will prob­a­bly en­cour­age peo­ple to do both re­cy­cling as well as re­turn­ing bot­tles to con­tin­ue the re­cy­cling process.

Beck­les said this will re­sult in less bot­tles pol­lut­ing the en­vi­ron­ment and al­so en­able WASA to de­liv­er wa­ter more ef­fi­cient­ly.