I can only hold my breath and hope that the Beverage Container Bill coming to Parliament will be the long- awaited oasis in a desert of environmental nonchalance.

Junior Minister in the Environment and Water Resources, Ramona Ramdial, admits that plastic bottles are about 50 per cent to blame for the Diego Martin flooding. I can't help but think this may be an accurate assumption. We play mas, and participate in marathons around the Savannah where we often drink copious amounts of water and sports drinks, and because of the lack of facilities, we throw the bottles carelessly onto the ground. We litter our beaches with leftover styrofoam plates, plastic and glass bottles and aluminium cans and shrug it off. We don't think twice about throwing garbage out of our windows while we are driving. I am not sure if it registers to participants that the same carelessly discarded garbage often contributes to the obstruction of drainage causing flooding and damage.

Where is our pride? We get excited when we win a gold medal at the Olympics, or Nicki Minaj films her music video in Trinidad and gloat with superficial pride that we are Trinis, while in the same instance throwing our garbage out of our car windows or on the sides of the road. Pride should be something that is shown in how we handle our historical buildings and our surroundings.

Half of the problem is the mentality of the people, the other half is our government. Where are the laws? Where are the facilities? Our government enjoys throwing around money bringing celebrities down to "motivate the youths against crime" yet the investment in our beautiful landscape is forsaken.

Disaster can be prevented. How many lives should be lost before our government and our citizens start to take this seriously?

Ijanaya Jacob

St Ann's