People generally don’t recycle in Barbados because it takes some effort (See our tab on Recycling in Barbados). We believe we have designed a way to reduce the effort so that people can be involved in a healthier way to manage waste in their country. The idea is very simple – if you make recycling easy for people, they will give it a try.

CoRe recognises that busy people have busy lives which include routines. We have developed three mechanisms for CoRe in Barbados:

1) The CoRe Centre
2) The CoRe Community
3) And Collect and Go

The CoRe Centre revolves around an actual structure – a shed or a room which can be kept locked that can store recyclables for up to two weeks.

A CoRe Community is usually a neighbourhood group who choose a day and a location to put their recyclable materials out, and B’s Recycling comes on that day to ‘count and pay’.

In both cases, a receipt is given along with cash from the recycling company. The data from here is collected by the Future Centre Trust.

The Collect and Go system is for some neighbourhoods or groups where payment is not necessary. It works something like this:

• The neighbours decide with B’s Recycling which morning they would put out their recycling (usually the day after the SSA collect garbage on their street).
• The neighbours would put their bag or box of recycling in front of their house on that day ONLY and B’s would come around and collect their materials on the same day.
• Materials are taken by B’s Recycling to their facility for processing.

Having a liaison person/s in the community to contact B’s Recycling periodically if there were issues arising would be important in this style.

Community recycling is easier for people for many reasons, the main one being community members don’t have to store huge bags of plastic bottles in their own homes for weeks. The recyclable materials (plastic, glass and metal) are collected by the waste broker regularly either from home of from a central location (located in their neighbourhood, church, school or workplace – where they go anyway!) and it’s done!

For more information on the CoRe NETWORK programme or to obtain your copy of the FCT developed “Community Recycling Made Easy Handbook” for USD20, please contact the Future Centre Trust.

When you are preparing dinner this evening, as you go to ‘throw things out’ consider the packaging you use and the waste your create with vegetable peelings, used vegetable oil, plastic containers, metal containers – so many things are created every day right there in your kitchen!

With recycling, we challenge you to try not to throw anything out!

Recycling right from your kitchen starts with the process of identifying which things can be recycled – mostly man made items (your peelings can be used for great compost!) Containers are then rinsed out so there are no nasties that attract ants, rants or other unsavoury characters (be careful with metal cans – tin or aluminium) and placed aside separately from your regular waste for either dropping off at your CoRe location, having a recycling broker collect your items from you or dropping the items at SBRC.

Try to recycle everything that your family used to prepare the meal – the plastic bread bag, the plastic tub of sour cream, the box the pasta came in, the can the beans came in, and the vegetable peelings.
Each of these things can be recycled – it’s up to you to decide if this is something you can organise your family to do without it becoming burdensome!

1. Educate yourself on the 3R’s and what they actually mean. Pay special attention to the third R – Recycle. Recycling takes a used item and reprocesses it into a new product.

2. Understand what is meant by Community Recycling and why it makes the most sense for people in Barbados at this time.

3. Get your community together and have a meeting. There may be people in your community who are already recycling and may have started the process on their own. Identify some of these people and see if you can work with them to learn from them and see how they can be included in your programme. This is especially true with schools where there are numerous PET bottles available for recycling by the various personnel working on site.

4. Identify and develop a small team of people in your community who will be your ‘Green Team’ to help manage the programme.

5. Identify which type of collection system you would wish to propose to your community.

6. Determine the best type of collection system for your community based on feedback you received at the meeting – CoRe Community, CoRe Centre or Collect and Go – if a CoRe Centre is chosen, get ready to build.

7. Practice recycling from today! Prepare a collection area in your own home. Set up 5 or 6 containers as a practice area and see if you can limit what you put into the ‘garbage’ to about 3 items today!

8. Create a budget and identify financing for your programme.

9. If using drums, find, purchase and prepare them for use.

10. If you are starting a centre, create signage and purchase supplies – broom, dustpan, gloves, clear garbage bags, a mop and a padlock as appropriate.

11. Prepare communication materials for your community – postcard, letter, emails – to tell them what they need to know. Make sure members of your community get a hands on teaching as well as written information to grasp the concepts.

12. Make sure the Green Team and the community are aware of their responsibilities and carry them out.

13. Identify potential risks to your programme.

14. Connect with the people who you will work with at the recycling company.

15. Make sure the recycling company has access to the centre (if using) and that they pay and leave a receipt. Identify any challenges if you are using the alternative systems – CoRe Community or Collect and Go.

16. Fax, email or phone in your data from your receipt to the Future Centre Trust – it helps us gather important information of the number of items being diverted from the landfill!

17. Check in with the recycling company quarterly to see what if any changes have been made to what they are collecting.
18. Continue to promote the programme in your community – new people will have moved in since you started.

1. Community participation: • You should make sure that at least 30% of your community are willing to partner with you on this recycling venture. You will be extremely lucky if you get 100% on your street or in your school! Try for it, but don’t be discouraged. • As more people get into the habit of recycling, it will become “the norm” for them. They will go to other people’s homes, or people will come to their homes and discussion will begin! That’s how it all starts, and it takes some time. • The community work together to look for solutions to problems encountered in the safe and effective management of the recycling community or centre;

2. Location: • You will need a location for the collection of the recyclable materials. That can be a shed or a simple weekly drop location in your neighbourhood. It could even be outside your front door, depending on the system you decide on.

3. Data Collection We invite regular data collection of the amounts of materials collected and the income earned to be provided to the Future Centre Trust. This will provide valuable information as to how much waste the collective communities are keeping out of the landfill.