Plastikeep starts shut down

With no word from Government on additional funding for the recycling programme, Plastikeep has begun to shut down and six of its bins were removed yesterday, including one from the Diego Martin West constituency office of Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley.

“If Government has not responded and given an extension and what is needed it is shutting down. No operations,” said Plastikeep Director and Founder Rosanna Farmer.

She said they will cease operations once they have brought in all of their 70 bins and collected whatever material. She reported they have still not received any word from the line ministry the Ministry Planning nor the Green Fund. Plastikeep has more than $1 million in outstanding debts including rent at their Maraval offices from which they are facing eviction.

The Planning Ministry, in a release yesterday, said the bins were the property of the Government and not that of Greenlight Network/Plastikeep as agreed to in a Memorandum of Agreement between the Government and Greenlight Network first signed in 2010. They also said the bins “should not be moved without authorisation from the Government.”

In response, Farmer said there were 23 months to plan how Plastikeep would be phased out and the Government’s recycling agenda phased in. She said, to date, Plastikeep had received no formal direction on that from the Government. Planning Minister Camille Robinson-Regis had previously responded that the matter was still with the Green Fund Advisory Committee which had not sent a recommendation forward as yet.

She previously informed Sunday Newsday that from January 2010 to December 2015 Plastikeep received $10,679,684 in three tranches. She reported the Green Fund Advisory Committee was concerned that Plastikeep had not built the necessary capacity and sustainability to be an independent organisation. She added there were weaknesses to its approach to its waste-recycling methodology which had not been addressed and a business plan had not been developed.

Farmer has responded that Plastikeep was never meant to be a sustainable business but a community project as envisioned by the Green Fund.

In their application document their objectives were to accumulate material for processing and to overcome the inertia in initiating a recycling culture.