Coca Cola cleans up for turtles

COCA COLA, Caribbean Bottlers, the Ministry of Public Utilities Adopt a River and other environmental stakeholders gathered on Thursday at Green Meadows in Santa Cruz, and pledged to do everything they could to protect the turtles, who will be coming onto TT shores during the current nesting season to lay eggs and produce the next generation of turtles.

Speaking on the meeting yesterday, Sanjay Jagrup, Health and Safety manager of Caribbean Bottlers Ltd, told Newsday that, from what he had seen in the meeting, there was a growing industry for recycling plastic.

“We closed the meeting with a tour of several recyclers who actually used recycled plastic to manufacture chairs and benches,” said Jagrup, “There is a growing industry that uses recycled plastics and if falls in line with our push for a circular economy.”

He said at the meeting there were several companies which used recycled plastic as one of their raw materials for production.

“Yesterday (Thursday) we saw companies that actually manufacture items using recycled plastic. We saw Flying Tree, a company which does concrete pavers, plant pots, benches concrete mix with plastic bottles. They use plastic and mix it with the concrete so they would use less concrete. Another company is taking the same plastic bottles and they are making benches and coffee tables. They are very sturdy, they look good and they are using plastic as their raw material,” Jagrup said.

The commitment made on Thursday saw government, non-governmental bodies and private companies come together for the benefit of the turtles. The several bodies agreed on working together in cleaning up the beaches around the nesting areas and educating people the dangers of pollution.

“Presently it is nesting season so we will be doing clean up in the nesting areas,” Jagrup said, “The second is the education factor in terms of making people aware of the importance of recycling and not disposing their garbage at beaches or rivers and what damage it does to turtles. Thirdly we will be placing bins at beaches around nesting areas and partner with I care and SWMCOL in collection at those bins.”

Jagrup added that Coca Cola and Caribbean Bottlers will be providing the bins, which is a practise the company is accustomed to doing. Jagrup pointed out Caribbean Bottlers and Coca Cola had already been doing something similar on the coastline for more than a decade with an international coastline clean-up initiative which takes place every year in September.

“Last year we did 12 beach clean ups with secondary schools where we removed 6000 pounds of garbage,” Jagrup said.