TT a giant plastic wasteland

THE EDITOR: To the people of TT, the problem of the single-use plastic container is not as important a topic as Carnival. If it were, streets and airwaves would be cluttered with concerned citizens protesting and demanding the Government sorts out the mess.

Research done in 1997 by a colleague, ECIAF graduate Ravi Sieupersad (RIP), revealed that citizens then consumed just over a million bottles of carbonated sweet drinks every day, and approximately half a million bottles of water. Every bottle was plastic.

In single-use plastic bottles alone, two million or more are thrown away daily. With many dumping recklessly, the seas around us, as well as all natural and manmade watercourses, are literally jammed with plastic of all types.

Plastic practically never completely disintegrates. It eventually becomes ultra-tiny particles called microplastics. Recently, the flesh of fish in the upstream Amazon River was found to be infested by microplastics.

Ravi’s figures for Styrotex food and beverage containers were even more astounding.

How long, what next, before radical action is taken to clean up the mess caused by deliberately chasing after goods packaged in fugitive plastic?

At best, the intermittent pronouncements by government officials and sporadic shoreline cleanup drives by concerned citizens constitute platitudinous patchwork. Plasters cannot cure a chronic malady. A major makeover requires radical resolve. A skilful surgical strike is the only way to remodel prevailing plastic paradigms. Unless they dumped it, the scalpel is in the Government’s hands.

In democracies, the voice of the people prevails. In constitutional democracies like TT, citizens exercise their power through the Government.

TT is a giant plastic wasteland. If the Government continues to turn a blind eye to this rabid thirst for single-use plastic, people must line the streets demanding it be curbed.

Disaster always clogs the future when conventional wisdom lets uncluttered advice go down the drain.

RICHARD WM THOMAS, Arouca