EMA’s war on waste

Recycling is not something new to the people of TT. We have had a culture of reusing things, especially containers, for decades.

How many people, when they were young, opened a tin of butter cookies to find sewing implements, opened a container of butter to find leftover food, or used a plastic or glass jar as a drinking cup?

That is why Hayden Romano, managing director of the Environmental Management Authority (EMA) believes TT can take things a bit further and get more involved in the recycling of garbage.

“We only became a throw-away generation in the 80s. We understood reuse, whether clothes or containers, we understood it. Maybe the advantage of challenging times is that we have to go back to some of these ways in terms of what our parents and grandparents used to do, not only because it’s more economical but now it impacts on our health.”

It is also why the EMA is trying to increase its collaboration roles, as well as promoting its recyclable solid waste collection project, iCARE, for Earth Day which is commemorated annually on April 22.

Romano told Sunday Newsday because of financial challenges, the EMA’s Earth Day activities were “low key.” He said because of funding and the fact that the EMA Act limited the organisation’s scope, it was important that the EMA coordinated and collaborated with other environmental agencies including the regional corporations, the Forestry Division, and Institute of Marine Affairs (IMA).

He said last week EMA staff met with the Police Service to discuss the challenge of noise pollution, which seemed to be the number one issue in almost every community in TT. Soon, he said they intend to meet with the IMA, Chaguaramas Development Authority, the Ministry of Planning and Development and other environmental agencies to discuss how they could work together to do more with limited resources with respect to celebratory days such as Earth Day.

“Because these days are important to build public awareness so that they could understand the issues and what part they can play because, to a certain extent, there is a lot of personal responsibility involved.”

The theme for Earth Day 2018 is End Plastic Pollution.

“We are all understanding now that plastics are a big problem. We need to do our part individually. We all need to take responsibility...This is a problem that all of us face. We live on a little island and we have to take better care of it.”

He said he was happy and proud that some groceries were making reusable bags available to their customers and encouraged corporate TT to get more involved.

This increased involvement could be accomplished through iCare, which was launched in 2015. Representatives of iCARE will be at the Green Market in Santa Cruz today, spreading awareness about the importance of recycling.

Romano said iCare, an acronym for community, awareness, recycle, everyday, was about culture change, and about TT making the decision to move away from disposing garbage to recycling.

He said the aim of the EMA was to mainstream the project in the public and corporate sectors, schools, and communities all over the country. Already, he said the Ministry of Public Utilities was involved through a public sector recycling project and soon the Central Bank would be involved too.

The project’s focus was on glass, plastic bottles, juice and milk boxes, and aluminium cans. People are asked to separate these items from their waste and deposit them into one of the iCare bins. They could be collected, sorted at the Solid Waste Management Company (SWMCOL), crushed and exported to be recycled. He stressed that these bins were not to be used for the disposal of regular garbage.

Because iCare is about a change in culture, Romano said the EMA realised it would be easier to mould young minds at schools than to break adult behavioural patterns. Therefore, one of it’s focus was the EMA’s school environment clubs. “The children buy in immediately and amazingly, they force their parents to do the right thing.”

He said people assumed that only individuals of higher income brackets recycle, but he used the example of the community of Cashew Gardens in Chaguanas as an example. He noted that people of the area had been recycling for over a year and they were very excited about it. While there would be challenges, he said recycling is about community involvement, and in addition to the physical environment, it would help with the social environment. “We have households in an area rather than communities. We’re hoping this recycling effort would help us build communities.”

“This is about human health and the environment. We’re not doing it just because it’s a good thing to do. We need to be doing it because we understand the impact with respect to our health. We need to start taking it seriously.”

He said the amount of plastic pollution in oceans worldwide has increased, especially in the case of microplastics. This was of particular concern as the marine life eat the plastic and the toxins could be transferred to them, then eaten by humans.

In addition, he said, flooding occurred, to a certain extent, because of improper waste disposal. It did not only damage property but increased cases of vector-borne diseases.

He stressed that plastic itself is not bad but it is the indiscriminate disposal of plastic objects that negatively affect our lives.