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transforming t&T<br />
Left Cocobel Chocolates’ owner Isabel<br />
Brash is a chocolate-making pioneer,<br />
transforming locally grown cocoa into<br />
exceptional confectionery. Below left<br />
Adrian Foster is an award-winning<br />
designer, whose fashionable Caribbean<br />
lines have been exhibited at New York<br />
Fashion Week and on Project Runway<br />
courtesy cocobel<br />
Climate change<br />
More severe storms, prolonged wet or dry<br />
seasons, the flooding of low-lying areas,<br />
and sea-level rise: these are some of the<br />
challenges that we should expect to face<br />
as the world gets warmer.<br />
As a species, we must join with<br />
the other eight billion other people on<br />
our planet to keep the temperature rise<br />
below 2 degrees Celsius. As individuals,<br />
we can start community action. As<br />
an oil and gas nation, with one of the<br />
highest per capita carbon footprints in<br />
the world, we can reduce our carbon<br />
production, mitigate it, rejuvenate plants<br />
and processes, conserve.<br />
Is carbon dioxide from our major<br />
industrial plants (LNG, methanol, gas<br />
processors) reusable? Some of the<br />
practices we need to adopt – reduction<br />
of waste, recycling, conservation – may<br />
seem futile to the ordinary citizen. But<br />
it is up to corporations to lead in the<br />
wise disposal of waste, including the byproducts<br />
of industrialisation.<br />
Plastics<br />
More efficient use of resources is generally<br />
seen as one of the keys to profitability<br />
and sustainability. At the rate at which<br />
we consume goods and services on our<br />
two islands, the recovery and re-use of<br />
waste should be a viable enterprise. How<br />
might we be innovative in producing a<br />
continuous cycle? Products from recycled<br />
plastics now range from cottage-industry<br />
reusable bags and woven rugs to new<br />
fabrics for shoes and blankets, industrial<br />
faux lumber, construction and road paving<br />
materials. Are we up to that challenge?<br />
michele jorsling courtesy adrian foster<br />
New energy<br />
As the world turns to renewable sources<br />
such as wind, wave and solar energy,<br />
might it be a natural step for the<br />
national electricity company to expand<br />
its business into the installation of solar<br />
panels, tapping a new, clean and infinitely<br />
renewable source of electricity?<br />
24<br />
Trinidad<br />
and Tobago Chamber<br />
of Industry and Commerce<br />
www.chamber.org.tt/contact-magazine
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