A leading local recycling company is telling the Government that it is ready and able to help make landfill fires a thing of the past.
Owner of B’s Recycling at Cane Garden, St Thomas Paul Bynoe said this afternoon he has invested substantial sums to import a state-of-the art shredder, which would eliminate the need to store discarded tyres at any landfill in the island.
Bynoe told Barbados TODAY all he needs now is Town Planning approval to construct his long delayed plant and install the shredder which had been sitting idle on his compound for the past eight years.
His position comes on the heels of the fire which broke out at the Sanitation Service Authority’s (SSA) Mangrove Pond Landfill on Monday sending black billowing smoke into the atmosphere.
The fire, which raged most of Monday and continued Tuesday, started in the northern section of the landfill where tyres are stored. Chief Fire Officer Errol Maynard expressed concern as fire fighters had to be called in to battle a blaze there for the second time in less than a year.
“As far as the fires are concerned, I also think that they should be a thing of the past. Back in 2014 when the Honourable David Thompson [Prime Minister] was alive, we gave him a proposal to take care of the tyres, paving the roads. But he took sick and passed away. However, since then till now, those tyres have been burning every year and costing the Government money,” the prominent recycler contended.
“We need to do the right thing. We need to make a decision on the tyres. The tyres should be shredded, extracting the steel…either pave the road or sell the raw material elsewhere,” Bynoe added.
As far as the shredder and its installation are concerned, he told Barbados TODAY that he recently complied with a request by the Government to submit a fresh Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and was now awaiting word on the outcome.
“We are hoping now that the environmental studies that we did… that would come through; and if we can get that done, then we would try to get the piece of land that we set out to get; and from there we hope to get things up and running,” he disclosed.
“If we get that shredder up, that would take fridges, stoves, washing machines; it could take wood…it could take the very tyres as well. We just need to get a little help getting from here [relocating]. They want us to move, we want to move. We going through the doors they ask us to go through, but I am waiting. I could only wait,” Bynoe stressed.
The environmentalist is adamant that landfills are outdated and suggested that full cycling by householders would reap dividends for the disposal of waste.
“If we get into full recycling by householders…separating at household, you would have less garbage going to any landfill and it can go to a recycler. What we do is either bale, shred, compact, whatever and ship that material somewhere and that material is made into whatever and comes back to the world as various items,” he noted.
Meanwhile the B’s owner disclosed that his company has been exporting at least 12 containers weekly to as near as Trinidad and as far as China.
He said the containers are at least 20 tons each comprising such items as plastics, metals, cardboard and batteries.
emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb
