“Plastic pollution is a serious issue. It’s important to be mindful of how you use plastics.”

This is the assessment of Janelle Berkley, programme coordinator of CEPEP Tobago. CEPEP (the Community Environmental Protection and Enhancement Programme) workers are among the participants in this year’s Recyclemania competition.

The initiative is helping to create awareness on the need for recycling and to encourage this practice.

This year, the staff of both the Division of Infrastructure, Quarries and the Environment and the Division of Community Development, Enterprise Development and Labour (DCDEL) challenged themselves to implementing waste management systems with the usage of recyclable plastics.

The Community Development Department within that Division unveiled a spectacular Basketball Hoops recycling bin made from plastic bottles. Staff then raised the bar of the challenge and introduced the DCDEL Bottle Recycling Championships.

“To create our bin,” Berkley said, “we would have used the plastic bottles to form the whole encasement of the bin and old PVC pipes just to make the structure, and nylon to run through the bottles to create the outer casement of the bin. For the net we used bottle caps, and the hoop is made from old bottle plastic covers,” she said.

Staff members then competed in four teams, shooting plastic bottles through the hoops to earn bragging rights in the competition.

The department’s aim was to show that recycling can also be a fun-filled, team-building activity.