As a company, Waste Recyclers Fiji Ltd has been engaged in waste management and recycling for the past 28 years. As an individual, I have lived the good waste management and recycling mantra for most of my adult life.
This paradigm is how I believe Fiji should embrace any work in the waste management and recycling space.
While there needs to be a collective push towards a common goal, the onus is really on us as individuals to incorporate ‘green-living’ principles and ethos in our daily lives. For any real change to happen in Fiji, we must first start with ‘me.’
If we can do this, and effectively take the “one person at a time” approach, we will begin to see a mass movement of determined, united and passionate people, working cohesively towards making the appropriate changes in waste management at our individual, family and community level.
I sincerely believe a movement that begins like this, will be very hard to stop once it picks up momentum. Getting the buy-in of every Fijian into a sustainable and long-term solution towards making Fiji greener will be much more easier if we take this approach.
Another aspect to consider is the idea of cleanup campaigns – something that Fijians are quite passionate about.
We must slowly begin to move away from this mindset because it breeds the very behaviour we are trying to change. Cleanup campaigns lull people into a false sense of the “I will just litter because someone else will pick it up” syndrome.
As recycling advocates, we believe there would be no need for cleanup campaigns if we all took personal responsibility when it comes to waste management and recycling – again the idea of bringing it back to “self”.
While we can hope to achieve that sense of individual responsibility through some of our advocacy work, it is equally important to inculcate a deep sense of civic pride in individuals, communities and stakeholders We acknowledge that best practices in recycling take time to be inbuilt within individuals as well as with organisations and so the practice of clean-up campaigns is an unfortunate necessity at this time.
I will go back to what
I had said earlier, we have been in the business for about 30 years and Waste Recyclers Fiji Ltd encourages any individual or organisation planning to have a clean-up drive/campaign to have discussions with us.
We are able to assist with the transferring of recyclables (provided they are in a condition that can be recycled) to our plants to be recycled. We can provide data on the volume of the different types of recyclables e.g. on PET Bottles that were collected, this data can be shared with the community where the clean-up happened.
This kind of information invokes a sense of ownership, people will sit up and take stock of the amount of waste produced and the amount that is carelessly discarded.
We are able to provide advice and workshops with the various groups who conduct the clean-up campaigns on how to separate the recyclables when collecting it.
Most importantly, we ensure as much as we can, to have the recyclables collected and directed away from landfills.
For me personally, this is important because in the past, when cleanup drives were conducted, many failed to ask the most pertinent questions – where would the collected waste be deposited and what happens now?
Clean up campaigns are good in the sense that they ensure that the community or designated area is cleaned but it just moves the waste from one area to another – the landfill.
If we really want to make a difference, we have to stop being wanton consumers of the latest gadgets and products and start seriously reflecting on the most important things in life.
Our focus should be on this – reducing the amount of waste being produced in every household and by doing this – we will ultimately reduce the amount of rubbish being dumped at landfills.
- AMITESH DEO is the director and CEO of Waste Recyclers Fiji Ltd. The views expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of this newspaper.
