Scouts recycle 100,000 bottles into park benches

The Scout As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go has trans­formed near­ly 100,000 dis­card­ed plas­tic bot­tles in­to ten park bench­es in­stalled in pub­lic spaces across north-west Trinidad.

The ini­tia­tive, fund­ed by the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion and Shell Trinidad and To­ba­go through the Ex­tra­or­di­nary Projects Im­pact­ing Com­mu­ni­ties (EPIC) pro­gramme, aims to tack­le plas­tic pol­lu­tion while pro­vid­ing durable pub­lic seat­ing.

Each bench rep­re­sents ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10,000 plas­tic bot­tles, or 300 kilo­grammes of waste di­vert­ed from the en­vi­ron­ment.

The project be­gan more than a year ago, en­gag­ing scouts and oth­er youth groups in clean-up and re­cy­cling ac­tiv­i­ties. The col­lect­ed plas­tic was processed by Fly­ing Tree En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment, which con­vert­ed it in­to plas­tic lum­ber and oth­er durable build­ing ma­te­ri­als used to con­struct the bench­es.

Since April, ten bench­es have been in­stalled in pub­lic spaces, in­clud­ing the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade in Port of Spain and Sa­van­nah West Park in Diego Mar­tin.

Act­ing Na­tion­al Scout Com­mis­sion­er Kr­is­han Puni­lal said the ini­tia­tive demon­strat­ed how young peo­ple could take prac­ti­cal ac­tion to ad­dress en­vi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges.

“Scout­ing has al­ways been about learn­ing by do­ing, and this project puts that prin­ci­ple in­to prac­tice,” Puni­lal said.

He said plas­tic pol­lu­tion was among the coun­try’s most vis­i­ble en­vi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges and the as­so­ci­a­tion had cho­sen to re­spond through prac­ti­cal ac­tion.

Each bench, he added, served as a re­minder that waste could be trans­formed in­to use­ful prod­ucts and that young peo­ple could play a lead­ing role in en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion.

The Scout As­so­ci­a­tion re­ceived $100,000 through the EPIC grant pro­gramme to im­ple­ment the project.

Now in its tenth year, the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion’s EPIC pro­gramme sup­ports com­mu­ni­ty-based or­gan­i­sa­tions un­der­tak­ing in­no­v­a­tive projects de­signed to de­liv­er last­ing ben­e­fits across Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The ini­tia­tive was co-fund­ed by Shell Trinidad and To­ba­go, with the re­cy­cled bench­es pro­vid­ing a prac­ti­cal ex­am­ple of how com­mu­ni­ty part­ner­ships can com­bine youth en­gage­ment, waste re­duc­tion and im­prove­ments to pub­lic spaces.

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