Plastic waste recycling continues to be high on the agenda for the Government of St. Kitts and Nevis. As such, St. Kitts is set to establish a Recycling and Packaging Plant, said the Minister of Environment and Climate Action, the Honourable Dr. Joyelle Clarke, on January 18, at the Prime Minister’s Monthly Press Conference with Cabinet Ministers at the NEMA conference room.

The Government of St. Kitts and Nevis is working with the Republic of China (Taiwan) on this project. Taiwan assisted Nevis in establishing a similar plant in December 2022.

“Recently, [Resident] Ambassador [of the Republic of China (Taiwan) to St. Kitts and Nevis] Ambassador [Michael] Lin and I spoke about the technical challenges we are having at the Solid Waste Landfill in St. Kitts in terms of implementing our recycling plant and it is a matter of energy,” said Dr. Clarke.

“Every industry requires some amount of energy generation, and we had that problem. However, we have been managing the challenge and we have in less than three months’ timeline, in terms of solving the energy timeline at the plant, so that we can establish our plastic recycling and packaging plant at the Solid Waste Landfill,” the Environment Minister added.

Dr. Clarke highlighted the recycling initiative ‘Let’s Recycle SKN,’ a non-profit organization headed by the Taiwan International Cooperation and Development Fund (ICDF). She noted that the Cabinet recently discussed the non-profit organization’s collaboration with Government Ministries and Departments.

“We spoke in Cabinet on Monday [January 16, 2023) about the fact that every ministry will be joining the ICDF in terms of recycling our plastic bottles. We will have a focal point from the Ministry of Environment who would be contacting all of the relevant permanent secretaries in every ministry,” said Dr. Clarke. “We are joining an initiative led by the Prime Minister’s Office and the Cabinet Secretariat in terms of collecting plastic bottles.”

As a strong advocate for conserving and protecting the environment, Dr. Clarke said that it is extremely important to get the plant up and running because “we can’t be an island that promotes a sustainable island state agenda and then have plastic bottles everywhere.” She added that it is also important to join our “critical partners, the Republic of China (Taiwan) in terms of recycling”