By Ulric Trotz

Ulric (Neville) Trotz was formerly the Deputy Director & Science Adviser, Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre, Belmopan, Belize

Recently at the Berbice Development summit held at the Kingston Marriot, President IrfaanAli announced that as part of the Government’s industrial diversification strategy, which aims to leverage the nation’s natural resources beyond oil and gas, the government would be moving ahead with the establishment of a glass bottle and recycling plant, utilising Guyana’s deposits of high quality silica sands. The facility will be sited in the Wales industrial zone which is currently under construction. It was reported that the President of the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA) had previously said the country’s flagship gas-to-energy project could springboard the establishment of a glass bottle factory and a recycling plant and that the InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB) had carried out a feasibility assessment on the viability of building a glass bottle plant in Guyana.

I fully support this initiative as part of Guyana’s industrial diversification strategy, an essential element in our efforts to avoid the dreaded “ resource curse.” Guyana once had a glass factory which failed because of the unreliability of the energy supply and from my perspective, because it was geared to produce sheet and not container glass. I agree with the focus in this facility on container glass for the burgeoning local and regional food and beverage industries and in the present global environment that requires a global effort to phase out the use of plastics.