Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Colm Im­bert says the Gov­ern­ment will sup­port any ini­tia­tive that re­duces plas­tic waste in this coun­try and hopes to es­tab­lish a ro­bust na­tion­al re­cy­cling sys­tem.

Speak­ing at Wednes­day’s in­au­gur­al cer­e­mo­ny of the Mt Lam­bert Bal­ing Fa­cil­i­ty, Im­bert ad­mit­ted that he was not aware of a two-year-old Every Bot­tle Back TT ini­tia­tive but vowed to as­sist in any way pos­si­ble to en­cour­age the re­cy­cling of plas­tic bot­tles.

“To put it sim­ply, just say what you want the Gov­ern­ment to do to pro­mote and sup­port the re­cy­cling of plas­tic bot­tles,” he stat­ed.

Speak­ing at his sec­ond event as Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, af­ter be­ing sworn in on March 17, Im­bert ex­plained that while plas­tic bot­tles are wide­ly utilised for the stor­age of food, bev­er­ages, clean­ing sup­plies, med­ica­tion and chem­i­cals, plas­tic pol­lu­tion neg­a­tive­ly im­pacts ecosys­tems and cre­ates chal­lenges that re­quire ac­tive re­spons­es by stake­hold­ers.

“Re­cy­cling plas­tic bot­tles is a key strat­e­gy for tack­ling these is­sues be­cause it ben­e­fits the econ­o­my, so­ci­ety, en­vi­ron­ment and pub­lic health,” he said.

Every Bot­tle Back TT is a joint in­dus­try ef­fort to col­lect and re­cy­cle plas­tic bev­er­age bot­tles in part­ner­ship with Blue Wa­ters, Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd and IDB Lab.

The ini­tia­tive sees con­sumers and in­de­pen­dent col­lec­tors tak­ing ac­cu­mu­lat­ed plas­tic bot­tles to a cen­tral­ly lo­cat­ed col­lec­tion cen­tre at 40 Char­lotte Street in Port-of-Spain and re­ceiv­ing a re­ward for each ac­cept­ed bot­tle.

In 2022, the non-prof­it re­search or­gan­i­sa­tion Glob­al Change Da­ta Lab re­vealed that this coun­try im­ports 129,669 met­ric tonnes of plas­tic an­nu­al­ly and of that, 6,372 met­ric tonnes of plas­tic de­parts through ex­ports, leav­ing over 123,000 tonnes un­ac­count­ed for.

“When waste is not man­aged it be­comes a prob­lem for every­one,” Im­bert said.

He said the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­istry is ac­tive­ly sup­port­ing the tran­si­tion to a cir­cu­lar econ­o­my that pri­ori­tis­es en­vi­ron­men­tal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties, which in­clude ini­tia­tives like the Na­tion­al In­te­grat­ed Sol­id Waste/Re­source Man­age­ment Pol­i­cy, the Na­tion­al Re­cy­cling Pol­i­cy and the Bev­er­age Con­tain­ers De­posit Re­turn Sys­tem.

“We aim to cut out land­fill waste by 50 per cent over the next ten years by es­tab­lish­ing a ro­bust na­tion­al re­cy­cling sys­tem,” Im­bert said.

Jose Luis Guiller­me­ty, from Con­tain­er Re­cy­cling Ser­vices, who leads the Every Bot­tle Back TT ini­tia­tive, said they had placed over 200 eco-re­cy­cling bins across the cap­i­tal and start­ed to de­vel­op a net­work of peo­ple to bring emp­ty con­tain­ers for pay­ment.

“Our growth has been im­pact­ful, it took us six months to reach the first mil­lion con­tain­ers col­lect­ed, the sec­ond mil­lion we reached in on­ly three months and then it took us on­ly one month to reach the three mil­lion mark,” he said.

Guiller­me­ty ex­plained that this was achieved af­ter they tran­si­tioned to mea­sure by weight. He said they cur­rent­ly have over 2,000 peo­ple who bring in plas­tic every month.

“We are right now in many dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions, schools, places of wor­ship, pri­vate venues,” he said.