Shell Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed has launched a com­post­ing ini­tia­tive, “Plat­form to Plant,” to trans­form food waste from its Poin­set­tia off­shore plat­form in­to com­post. On Fri­day, 1st No­vem­ber, Shell em­ploy­ees pack­aged and dis­trib­uted the first batch of 1,100 pounds of com­post to farm­ers and house­holds in Ma­yaro, Guayagua­yare, and near­by com­mu­ni­ties. This ini­tia­tive fol­lows Shell’s Plant for Life pro­gramme, which helped 300 house­holds grow their own home gar­dens.

By re­cy­cling food waste in­to com­post, Plat­form to Plant helps lo­cal farm­ers re­duce their re­liance on chem­i­cal fer­til­iz­ers and im­prove soil health.

Troy Wing, En­vi­ron­men­tal Lead at Shell Trinidad and To­ba­go, said, “At Shell, we are com­mit­ted to re­duc­ing waste and sup­port­ing the ecosys­tems around us. We are thrilled to col­lab­o­rate with farm­ers and oth­er stake­hold­ers like our com­mu­ni­ty ad­vi­so­ry coun­cil with­in our fence line com­mu­ni­ty. These mean­ing­ful part­ner­ships strength­en our re­la­tion­ship and sup­port com­mu­ni­ty re­silience. To­geth­er we can con­tin­ue to im­ple­ment sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes like we did in our Plant For Life pro­gramme.”

Ms. Paula Eve­lyn from the Mafek­ing com­mu­ni­ty said, “The Plat­form to Plant ini­tia­tive is very im­por­tant to the com­mu­ni­ty. It is an af­ford­able way to get nu­tri­ents for plants and al­so en­cour­ages com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers to be­gin com­post­ing for them­selves. This ini­tia­tive by Shell will urge peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty to con­tin­ue to grow their own home gar­dens and will sub­si­dize our gro­cery costs. I am grate­ful to Shell for their con­tin­u­ous sup­port in pro­vid­ing pro­grammes that pro­mote sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment in the com­mu­ni­ty.”

The Plat­form to Plant ini­tia­tive is one of many projects Shell is un­der­tak­ing to sup­port and up­lift com­mu­ni­ties around its op­er­a­tions. The com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to build strong re­la­tion­ships with­in mem­bers of the EC­MA fence line com­mu­ni­ty and re­mains com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment and com­mu­ni­ty well-be­ing.