It’s up to us to stop it from leaking into our environment. Well! Now we can get cash for our plastic trash!
Antigua and Barbuda has been selected by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, Regional Office for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean (IUCN-ORMACC), with support from the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) and Searious Business through the Ministry of Health, Wellness and Environment for a Plastic Free Waste Islands Project.
The Ministry has partnered with Will’s Recycling and Antigua and Barbuda Waste Recycling Corporation (ABWREC) to implement this project. Giving new life to your trash tagline will be a new incentive across the island where all PET code (1) soda and water bottles will be collected at pop up locations across the island for twenty (0.20) cents per bottle.
Starting July 5th 2021 in a phased approach three locations will be operational on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm daily. These include adjacent Epicurean Fine Foods & Pharmacy Supermarket on Epicurean Drive, Ebenezer Plaza South Mall and Crab Hole Liquors Cobb’s Cross. Phase two will see the addition of four extra locations covering other high traffic areas on the island and Barbuda. All soda and water bottles returned will be processed at ABWREC and exported to a recycling plant in Mexico.
They will then be processed by the food-grade recycling plant run by ALPLA, resulting in converting the old bottles back into raw material to be used for new bottles.
Giving new life to your trash and closing the loop of plastics on island. Plastic bottles made from PET are perfect for recycling and utilises less energy than new plastic aiding in sustainable energy efficiency.
It is important to note that for payment to be made on the return of soda and water bottle of code (1) origin bottles should be clean with no caps, transparent, not dirty or damaged nor containing any liquid.
Plastic pollution is having a colossal impact on our ecosystems, economies and in our ocean.
The Ministry of Health, Wellness and the Environment on behalf of the government welcomes this initiative, which is clearly a demonstration of our commitment to make Antigua and Barbuda a plastic free environment.
This is obviously a follow-up to our success in ridding our environment of single-use plastics and we recognise the cooperation of members in the business community, especially importers and we look forward to their continued collaboration and support.
This time however, we will need the cooperation of the public at large for this to be a success said Minister Joseph.
