Living in TT for three decades, Juan Andrade has made it his mission to protect as best he can the environment of the country he calls home.
His vehicle for doing so, the Flying Tree Environmental Management NGO, was registered in 2019 but has been in existence for over 20 years.
Flying Tree is funded, in part, by Milagros Solutions Ltd, a plastic bottles and caps manufacturing company of which Andrade is a director. Those funds are used to recycle plastics and reforest the Manzanilla area.
It also runs social, empowerment, and community improvement programmes, assisting migrants, the less privileged and the vulnerable.
[caption id="attachment_1041361" align="alignnone" width="1024"] A RB25 engine is used to power machinery to create plastic lumber at the Flying Tree factory. - Jeff K. Mayers[/caption]
Among other things, Flying Tree collects plastic from beaches and rivers, the Environmental Management Authority’s iCare programme through SWMCOL, from private entities such as Hadco Group’s recycling division, Brydens and Vemco in Diego Martin, San Juan, and Carapo, and other manufacturers, and converts it into useful products for all to enjoy.
Andrade told Sunday Newsday, “When you exhaust the ways to remove a harmful particle from the environment, you need to sequester it. In other words, you need to take it out of the environment and put it in a place where it cannot be harmful to the environment and to humans.
“We take the plastics that are difficult to process into plastic lumber and we use it as an aggregate for concrete products. And in that way, we also create benches, construction blocks, pavers, planters and giant tiles for difficult-to-access-area emergency programmes to create temporary access routes for heavy load vehicles.”
He stressed that plastics are not only in bottles and they are not “the enemy.” Plastics are used in eyeglasses, packaging, cell phones, stationery, sneakers, shrink film, toys, tampon applicators, bags, containers, fans, the microbeads in facewash, shampoo bottles, hair extensions, buckets and much more.
“We collect huge amounts of plastic from pre-consumers, but very important to understand is why we are so successful with our programmes. Over the years, by bad teaching and learning techniques and bad management of procedures, people thought the plastic problems in the environment was just the bottles.
“But investigators and teachers at UWI have shown that, in TT at least, plastic bottles only account for 23.5 per cent of the problem. But the plastic bottles are what you can see every day.”
He said it was the responsibility of the makers of products to tell customers how to use the products and how to recycle them. Flying Tree has taken up some of that responsibility, not just by creating the plastic lumber and concrete sequester, but through training.
[caption id="attachment_1041359" align="alignnone" width="1024"] A three-tonne truck delivers plastic waste for recycling at the Flying Tree Arima location on October 12. - Jeff K. Mayers[/caption]
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