Editorial | Good news on plastic bottles

Positive things sometimes happen when no one seems to be paying attention, which is apparently the case with the recycling of plastic bottles in Jamaica. This isn’t often the stuff of prime-time or front-page news.

However, this week, this newspaper reported that Recycling Partners of Jamaica (RPJ), a public-private sector recycling initiative, last year increased its collection of plastic bottles by 49 per cent, based on the 3, 505, 330 pounds – 1,593,331 kilogrammes, approximately – that reached its collection centres.

By our calculation, those figures crudely translate to around 161 million 500-millilitre bottles that were saved from Jamaica’s landfills, or being dumped on roadsides, in gutters, gullies, streams and rivers. Ultimately, large quantities of the bottles reach the sea to further damage the marine ecosystem.

Jamaicans know well the land-side consequences of this kind of dumping of this non-biodegradable waste. We have seen how, during heavy rains, gullies, blocked by plastic bottles, overflow their banks and flood communities, causing damage to property and disruption of lives.

LONG WAY TO GO

We have good reasons, therefore, to celebrate RPJ’s 2021 success, even as we remind that Jamaica still has a long way to go in reckoning with the problem of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles, as well as other forms of plastic, in the environment. .

Indeed, even with last year’s big jump in bottle collections, only a small fraction of the PET bottles is being recycled. By RPJ’s estimate, around 800 million plastic bottles are produced in Jamaica annually. Its goal is to collect 85 per cent for recycling. This would mean capturing 680 million of those bottles. Based on our crude analysis, 161 million bottles collected in 2021 would represent less than a quarter (24 per cent) of RPJ’s ultimate target – if all bottles were 500ml PETs.

Those figures do not include the several millions PET and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) bottles imported into the island that contribute to Jamaicans’ total use of plastic bottles, which the Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CAPRI), in 2018, calculated at 350 per person, per year. That number is probably higher by now, although any rise might have been tempered in 2020 by a pandemic-induced slowdown in imports, and domestic recession.

For a fuller picture of the waste management issues Jamaica faces with plastics, add to this mix the fact that plastics account for 15 per cent, and rising, of the more than 800 million tonnes of solid waste collected annually by the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA), the government agency that collects garbage and manages landfills.

Given that there is no substantial waste differentiation or plastic recycling scheme by the NSWMA, the RPJ’s project attracts greater significance. And it is sensible that plastic-bottle manufacturers and businesses that use them for packaging are involved. It’s a way to head off potentially more intrusive regulations.

HOW FAST COLLECTION CAN GROW

There are questions, however, of how fast RPJ’s collection can continue to grow and whether its current business model will meet the targets it set itself. A substantial portion of its collection is done by schoolchildren, as part of collection drives by the institutions. It’s a good activity for the students and schools.

The RPJ has expanded the scheme by broadening its network of drop-off points and promoting its payment mechanism, which it calls a deposit refund system (DRS), but isn’t quite the same as the DRSes in most other countries.

In the Jamaican model, consumers don’t pay a premium or leave a deposit when they buy certain products (usually drinks) in plastic bottles, then recoup that deposit on returning the bottle. Instead, RPJ, according to its website, pays up to J$10 per pound for PET and HDPE bottles returned to it, but apparently on a minimum of 150 pounds of plastic, or around 7,000 500ml PET bottles.

This is likely to be a worthwhile business opportunity, especially for small, community-based entrepreneurs who may establish their own collection systems as well as forage for plastic bottles. The question is whether such a system incentivises individuals and households to keep their plastic bottles and return them for money, rather than placing them in the trash headed for landfills or tossing them on roadsides.

Perhaps last year’s performance provides a basis for optimism that the model will achieve its goals. It is one, though, which should be kept under review.