Good first moves on plastics
COME JANUARY next year, all those who once imported plastic items such as drinking straws, ‘scandal’ bags less than 2ft square, and styrofoam meal containers will have to sneak these in through Customs and run the risk of huge fines of millions of dollars or prison time. Serious business!
By January 2020, companies like Wisynco, the largest manufacturer of plastic products, will either have to retool and innovate or, as hinted by its CEO William Mahfood, lay off staff. Serious business, too.
In searching for the perfect middle ground in bringing greater protection to our environment, someone like my bredren Soupy, who sells, yes, soup, at the Chancery Street transport hub, will not be happy. Workers at Wisynco will have long been informed by their boss, Mr Mahfood, that major change is coming. Some will be on tenterhooks.
Such is the price one pays when necessary change can no longer be pushed any farther down the road. If there is one aspect of the Government’s approach that has left me a little disappointed, it is that the approach to public outreach, PR campaigns, and extensive community meetings will only be starting now.
Jamaicans are, on the whole, not very gung-ho on environmental matters, so it is quite likely that the Government took the gamble to make the community outreach now instead of at the beginning when many would find a million and one reasons why the ban on plastics would never work. That is simply the reality of how we are as a people.
In 2015, the local fast-food chain Island Grill took the bull by the horns, so to speak, and, acting on its own, decided to make its meal packaging environmentally friendly. The boss admitted that it was an expensive exercise, but she absorbed the increases instead of passing it on to the consumer. To Thalia Lyn, making the environment a better place for the next generation trumped every other consideration.
But for my friend Soupy, what alternatives are available to him? That small styrofoam cup was just perfect for him. And what about the householder who would typically use a scandal bag collected at the shop to hang on a kitchen drawer handle to collect garbage?
She will have to invest in a heavy-grade plastic garbage container lined with, maybe, a plastic bag of, say, dimensions 24x36 and later make that available for the refuse collector by her gate. Many changes will have to be made.
“If there is one aspect of the Government’s approach that has left me a little disappointed, it is that the approach to public outreach, PR campaigns and extensive community meetings will only be starting now. ”
(low paying), the demand for graduates even with a second degree is limited in the typical workplace.
Criticisms have been made that our tertiary institutions (outside of the excellent CMU) only turn out lawyers, doctors, and graduates in the humanities. Certainly those bright students at our tertiary institutions studying STEM subjects would have known that the Government was on a mission to rid the country of the large mass of plastics.
What were they and the supervisors in PhD theses doing all this time? Writing useless tomes just to secure the designation? One source told me that the Scientific Research Council has consulted with the Government, but nothing else was heard.
Certainly, while I would not expect Thalia Lyn from Island Grill to share proprietary secrets with her competitors, her ecofriendly meal packaging is available for all. Who is the bright graduate student prepared to take it apart, experiment with it, and, based on the advances made, secure funding for more testing, experimentation, and innovation?
This is an ideal situation presented to our brightest local students from UWI, UTech and NCU before the next big invention in plastics alternatives arrives pre-packaged from either Singapore, China, or Japan. The Internet is rife with plastic-replacement packaging, but pricing is still the elephant in the room.
The horse and buggy had to give way to the earliest versions of cars as the internal combustion engine came to the fore. In the 1960s, fuel injection was a rarity in gas-powered vehicles. We are now into the era of electrical vehicles and those producing carbon-based fuels are quite unhappy. In 50 years’ time, the internal combustion engine will be history.
So, must we recognise important changes now before they crash into us and leave us socially and financially crippled?