Upcycling vs recycling

Upcycle means to reuse (discarded objects or material) in such a way as to create a product of higher quality or value than the original.

Foreign currency pressures would be mitigated if many of the commercial buy and sell businesses closed up shop and online shopping expended. So people could have use of the money commercial businesses spend to buy what they need online at reduced cost. Also T&T should take seriously recycling and inventing new uses for materials and goods it would normally discard as refuse. Billions of dollars in useful recyclable materials are sent for burial or burning in the country’s dumps. The Local Government Minister is forecasting a national cleanup week starting January 16th.

Steupes.... this not what the country needs. This is more short term political vision.

After a day of gathering up rejected materials what happens next? The next day the whole country will go back to usual dumping in the wrong place, stinking up the country again, undoing clean-up effort. So what’s needed is a collection and recycling system. It’s been talked about for half a century in T&T. Governments come and go and no effective material rejection collection and recycling system has ever been formulated to transform talk to implementation.

What is more, T&T should be taught to think differently about garbage. If T&T could rise to the occasion to become creative with discarded articles, the country could invent new application for discards rather than sending them for burial or burning at dump sites. And in so doing, reduce the amount of products it imports, which then adds to national waste.

Alan Peters via email