MINA touts new plastic recycling campaign at Chamber meeting

Mariana Islands Nature Alliance executive director Roberta Guerrero touted the non-profit’s new plastic recycling campaign during the Saipan Chamber of Commerce general membership meeting last Wednesday at the Crowne Plaza Resort Saipan.

She said MINA’s Community Recycles Plastic campaign’s goal is to tear down the old linear economy of getting rid of plastic by just throwing them and in its place a circular economy.

While the old linear economy made use of the “take-make-dispose” strategy, the circular economy concept hopes to put in place the”make-use-recycle” concept.

To this end, MINA recently acquired a 3-in-1 Plastic Upcycling Machine that creates products for a myriad of uses for the local community. 

Using recycled plastic that usually end up at the dumpsite in Marpi like soda and mouthwash bottles, peanut butter, salad dressing, and vegetable oil containers, plastic bags, milk jugs, and even discarded plastic toys, MINA has produced all sort of household products ranging from plastic bowls and strainers, to snack clips, and even Lego-like bricks for children.

Guerrero said the 3-in-1 Plastic Upcycling Machine so far has worked like a charm as sorted out plastic first goes into the shredder hopper before it passes through an extrusion machine. It then gets funneled into an injection machine where it is fashioned into different items for daily use.

Guerrero said the genesis for the new plastic recycling campaign came after MINA found out that the CNMI Public School System’s meal program produces a lot of plastic waste from the containers it uses.

She said PSS distributes approximately 3,392,820 meals a year that translates to a boatload of plastic bottles, plastic forks and spoons, and plastic food containers that could end up in the soon-to-be over-capacity landfill in Marpi.

“This is just in the public schools and doesn’t include private schools, fiestas, parties, and other events. So you can just imagine how much plastic actually goes to the landfill because it can’t go anywhere else at this point,” she said.

One of the downsides of the 3-in-1 Plastic Upcycling Machine, however, is that caps of plastic bottles can’t really be shredded.

Aside from the Community Recycles Plastic campaign, MINA also has other projects ongoing, namely the Adopt-A-Bin Program, Schools For Environmental Conservation, Marine Debris Assessments, Bring Back Our Trees, Monofilament Recycling Bin, and the Tasi Watch Community.

Schools For Environmental Conservation provides hands-on project-based learning experiences to middle school students.

Adopt-A-Bin Program allocates recycling bins to popular beaches and tourist sites throughout Saipan, while Marine Debris Assessments has so far removed 79,000 lbs of debris from the Tinian Harbor and southern coast of Saipan after Super Typhoon Yutu.

To promote responsible fishing and help protect turtles and birds from getting entangled in fishing lines, MINA’s Monofilament Recycling Bin program has installed 10 monofilament line bins in high-usage areas on Saipan where fishermen can place their used monofilament lines to be collected and recycled. 

The Bring Back Our Trees program, for its part, has planted over 1,000 native trees with more than 800 volunteers throughout Saipan

Last but not the least, the Tasi Watch Community Ranger Program recruits unemployed recent high school graduates and trains them to become community conservation messengers.

Guerrero also implored Chamber members to buy tickets or help sponsor their upcoming MINA Gala, adding that the non-profit is “Sucking on fumes right now as far as keeping the program running is concerned.”