For the Season

Greenlight music CD to raise funds for projects

Some of the handmade CD covers (courtesy local artists) - also on sale

Greenlight Network presents:
The Nature of Sound CD (Volume 1)

Only $50TT (local sales) $10US overseas sales (includes postage) All proceeds go to Greenlight's Environmental Project Fund
Ideal for birthday and Christmas gifts, gifts for friends abroad who want a taste of Trinidad, a gift to yourself - to add to your CD collection.

Songs are all 100% original, environmentally conscious lyrics and music created by some of your favourite local alternative artistes.

The Environmental Song – John Pollard
Do They Care? – Malik
Shades of Grey – Glenford Bhagat
Ask The Dust – Tie Dye Kitty
The Way We Live Our Lives – Anti Everything
Detrimental – Sheldon Manoo
Ruck So – Don’t Panic
Mother Nature’s Warning – 5 O’Clock Shadow
Luv Shotz – Ozy Majik
In This Garden – Elspeth Duncan
Mantra – Navid Lancaster
Kalau Nasty – Rahil Babooram
Who Shot Paradise? – Jointpop
Supreme Creator – Mark Ng Wai

Please contact:
Elspeth @ 786-2539
Victor @ 314-4265
if you are interested in purchasing:
(a) a copy or copies for yourself or others
(b) copies to resell in your own store and make a profit for your own cause
(c) copies to give as a gift to your customers or as part of your nature tour package

Thank you for your interest.

Elspeth
On behalf of Greenlight Network
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Greenlight Network: Healing our inner and outer environments
http://greenlightnetwork.blogspot.com

What to do with your plastics on 27 June 2010 and beyond

Dear All,

Please note that Recycling in Motion will be accepting plastics collected during Trinidad & Tobago's national clean up on 27 June.

Please bring all plastic to R.I.M. at 6 Maingot Road, Champs Fleurs
Sunday 27th June from 10 a.m. - 2 p.m.
Weekdays at regular business hours: 8:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.

Kindly put plastics into clear plastic bags, available from Rotoplastics; 674-8265 or Rope Works in Arima 642-1575. If for some reason you cannot acquire clear garbage bags in time for Sunday and must use regular black garbage bags, please ensure that they contain ONLY plastic and no other waste material.

Recycling in Motion accepts plastics 1 - 7 (including plastic shopping bags, styrofoam cups and plates, bottles for cleaning products, shampoo, yoghurt containers, toothpaste and cosmetic tubes, oven-ready meal trays, etc).

Recycling in Motion:
1. See map for directions
2. Telephone: 789-7945

Please circulate this as widely as possible via email, Facebook and your other social media networks, so that those involved in the clean up know of this option. This way we avoid the plastics going into the landfill.

Thank you.

Guide to collecting plastic for recycling

Those living in Diego Martin are in the target area for our plastic recovery pilot project, Plastikeep. We have set up Plastikeep bins in specific locations so that you can deposit plastics collected at home. For more information on locations and the collection process, please contact Plastikeep's Project Manager Rosanna Farmer at 384-2079 or email info@plastikeep.com

For those who live East and South of POS, please read below.

PREPARE YOUR PLASTICS FOR COLLECTION
WHAT TO DO

1. KEEP YOUR PLASTIC OUT OF YOUR REGULAR GARBAGE


Plastic bottles, plastic containers, plates, utensils and even plastic shopping bags can be recycled. Use a clear garbage bag (available from Rotoplastics; 674-8265), other transparent bag or a container of your choice to collect plastics separately from your other household waste.

2. REMOVE CAPS AND COVERS

A bottle and its cap are made of different types of plastic. Your separation of caps from bottles saves processing time at the plastic sorting facility.

3. RINSE

A quick rinse of your plastics to remove remainders of food helps to prevent germ and pest infestation. Dirty plastic cannot be processed, and will end up at the dump.

4. CRUSH


Please help increase the efficiency of waste collection by crushing bottles and containers before disposal. Bins will hold four times more crushed than uncrushed containers.

5. BRING IT


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FOR THOSE LIVING EAST OF POS
Please take your plastics to RECYCLING IN MOTION- 6 Maingot Street, Champs Fleurs (call for details and directions: 678-6786). OR if you have a large volume of plastic bags (e.g. you and your neighbours have been collecting), call RIM and they will collect.

N.B. They will only collect plastics stored in the clear garbage bags. They need to ensure that only plastics are contained in the bags.

THOSE LIVING SOUTH OF POS
Please contact Piranha Plastics for collection and details on the kinds of plastic they collect.

Please help to educate by spreading this information to your friends, co-workers, neighbourhood schools and businesses.

Logo and launch for Plastikeep

Introducing the official logo of Plastikeep, the plastic recovery pilot project for which Greenlight Network received financial support from the Green Fund in March 2010. Inherent in the logo is the power of communities coming together to ensure that our plastic waste is properly and continually disposed of for recycling purposes.

Plastikeep will officially be launched on Thursday 13th May at the Hyatt Regency. Under the guidance of Project Manager Rosanna Farmer and her team, the project will educate and encourage residents, schools and businesses in the Diego Martin area on adequate methods of collecting their plastic waste in specially provided clear plastic bags. These bags will be deposited in strategically placed Plastikeep bins, collected twice weekly by Plastikeep trucks and transported to a plastic sorting facility to be chipped and/or crushed and exported for recycling.

The entire collection process will be monitored so that we can be accountable for the project's outcome.

Food Security in T & T - a national priority

Winner of the IICA/CARDI Excellence in Agricultural Journalism Award (2009) for TV/Video.
Theme: Achieving food security in Trinidad and Tobago - a national priority.
Video: Elspeth Duncan
Featured School: The University School, St. Augustine

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At the age of six, the students of Prep at the University School are already ensuring their food security. Under the guidance of Vice Principal/Class Teacher, Ms Crooks, these small farmers grow huge, healthy organic vegetables in their school garden.

Important: How to care for an injured baby bird

A few days ago, the baby dove in the above image came to me looking sickly, and died in my hands a few minutes later. I wrote to Detta Buch (Wildlife Orphanage and Rehabilitation Centre - WORC) and told her about it. She is currently out of the country and sent a detailed email. Please read it (below). It is educational and easy to understand. At some point or another most of us come across baby birds that fall from their nests or are victims of attack or illness. It is very rewarding to nurse an injured animal back to health ... especially a bird, to see it fly off.

From Detta's email:
When you find a baby bird ( any bird) pick it up gently but securely and examine it for any wounds, broken legs, etc. Gently turning it over in the palm of your hand so that the chest is facing you (you can keep your hand in such a position that the bird is still vertical) ease out each wing at right angles to the body, checking the bones of the wing. They are in the same arrangement as your arm. From the inside view any breaks or punctures are easily visible.

In this case there may not have been anything you could have done . The pussy eyes may suggest an infection or pox contracted from pigeons. This would also have caused the swollen nares.

The pigeon pox is a virus and highly contagious to doves and certain other native birds. This is the reason I don't take in pigeons unless they have a pigeon club band. I have another resource person who handles them.

You could give simple triage easily. Keep some supplies in the house: peroxide, Q-Tips, cotton wool, iodine and children's Painol. Mix a small quantity of Peroxide and h2o (half &half) and using Q-tips or cotton wool, completely clean the wound and the surrounding area. Because birds don't have a liquid lymphatic system, and creams make a mess of feathers, I use powdered antibiotics. A good standard is Beneocin. It's a broad spectrum and well tolerated. If you know your doctor well enough and he trusts you, you could ask for a prescription, explaining why you want it.

Pain management is an often talked about problem, I have found the simplest thing is Painol, but if you can get ARNICA in a tablet or powder it would be better as it is homeopathic. Either get it down the birds throat or mix with a little water and give it with a dropper from the side of the beak, a drop at a time.

Just a cautionary note: When putting liquid down a bird's throat make sure you avoid the glottis. This is the opening on the back of the birds tongue. It is the airway to its lungs. Also remember that these are very small organisms and don't have much body mass. Use only very small quantities of the drug.

Lastly, keep it warm and secure. I have a cheap heating electric pad which I place under the cage at night. You could keep the bird in a box in a quiet and warm place in the house.

Finally: my valued resource person is quite close to you, Dr.Gabriel Brown. He is the avian specialist at the vet school, and you will find him in the small building on the south perimeter road as you pass the new Oncology unit, and the incinerator of the vet school. There is parking off the road but you have to walk round the corner to the glass door. Alternately you could drive around to the Small Animal Clinic, drive past it into the bovine area and the little building is facing you. In this case it would have been useful to have taken the little body up to him for a necropsy. This way you would get some information back on what happened to it. It also provides the students with useful experience.

I have a small styrene container in which I transport little bodies. The protocol they prefer is to have the animal/bird placed in a clean zip-lock bag as soon after it expires as possible. This way they can examine the parasites it may carry and then place it in the carrier with a few zip-lock bags of ice. No freezing.

FOOTNOTE FROM DETTA:

In the case of baby birds or an injury case, it is important to identify the species it order to feed it correctly. On the wrong diet, the bird will not survive.

Richard ffrench's book "the Birds of Trinidad & Tobago" has excellent plates for ID and some information on their habits and food sources. Be cautious when taking information off the net. The same species may occur in the southern USA but have different diets and are adapted to those, whereas, the same species from Venezuela, the Guyanas, and the amazon may have more closely related habits.

Finally, it is extremely important, to consider that you are helping this individual to survive and return to its own environment. Only if the individual is crippled and unable to survive in the wild should it become domesticated (habituated) and then a permit should be sought from the FORESTRY DIVISION, or it could be turned over to an established Rehabilitation Centre, for use.

THANK YOU, DETTA.

Greenlight gets Green Fund $upport for Plastic Recycling

Planning Housing and the Environment Minister Emily Dick-Forde, right, chats with the first recipients of grants from the Green Fund yesterday. At left are president of the Greenlight Network Elspeth Duncan and managing director, Fondes Amandes Community Reafforestation Project, Akilah Jaramongi. Photo: Karla Ramoo

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Green Fund $$ for 2 projects

After several years of existence, Government distributed yesterday more than $2.7 million from the Green Fund to two community organisations. Planning, Housing and Development Minister Dr Emily Dick-Forde presented cheques totalling $1,914,806 and $852,281 to Fondes Amandes Community Group and Greenlight Network, respectively, for two projects. Fondes Amandes will use the money to continue its reafforestation initiative in the Fondes Amandes watershed in St Ann’s.

The funding is to complete the project within WASA’s lands in the watershed, upgrading infrastructure of the facilities on the site and to continue outreach/educational activities. And the Greenlight Network’s will use its funds to undertake a plastic recycling initiative. It’s the first project of the kind being undertaken in T&T. Citizens will be able to dispose of their household plastic waste in a manner that will ensure protection of the environment.

Dick-Forde, in addressing the ceremony at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, on Wrightson Road, Port-of-Spain, said legislation was expected to be amended shortly to allow a larger number of community groups to apply for grants under the Green Fund, which was established in 2004. The fund provides grants to community groups and organisations for projects such as environmental conservation, reafforestation or remediation.

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