The groundwork is underway for the construction of a $41 million Compost and Single Stream Recycling Facility at Vaucluse, St Thomas.
Prominent waste hauler and recycler Anderson Cherry announced on Tuesday that the land was being cleared for the facility, pending approval from Town and Country Planning which he hopes to get very soon.
Cherry said some 133 Barbadians will be employed in the single stream plant once it is up and running, while about 27 should find work with the compost facility.
Cherry, who is Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Jose Y Jose Liquid and Solid Waste Management Inc, and head of Project Recycle Ltd, disclosed that the venture will be done in two phases, beginning with the compost facility.
“With approval, the Compost Facility could be finished within six to eight months. The Single Stream Recycling Plant will be ready in at least 18 months. It will be in phases. So we are levelling the land right now so that as soon as approval is given, we will start the Compost Facility, then the Single Stream Recycling Plant will be constructed,” the recycling advocate told Barbados TODAY.
“The Single Stream Recycling Plant will allow us to collect all types of recyclables . . . and machines along with manual labour will separate the recyclables. The recyclable materials will go into the Single Stream Plant. The food waste and the organic waste like coconut shells, tree limbs, along with the food waste and animal offal and animal waste like what is taken from chicken pens, will be placed into the Compost Facility.
“The whole vision of the project was designed around waste diversion from the landfill,” the waste hauler added.
Cherry said if one looked at waste diversion and what it cost the Government to operate the landfill, there would be significant savings as a lot of the waste would be diverted.
“So, Government would not have to build a $34 million landfill every 10 years. They would not have to buy all the expensive tractors to manage the waste because less waste would be going there. You will save the foreign exchange from bringing chemical fertiliser, which is $16 million a year . . . because we will be able to make our own compost here while providing employment,” he argued.
Cherry said he had turned his attention to this project because he was forced to pull the plug on his Pink Bin Initiative in which householders and businesses would pay a fee to have their recyclables collected in pink bins made available by his company.
“The Pink Bin thing had come to a grinding haul for the simple reason that we cannot compete with Prosource,” he stated, referring to an affiliate of the Innotech Group of Companies that was last year awarded a contract by Government to provide households with a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)-enabled 65-gallon rollout cart for general waste and an 18-gallon bin to be used for commingled recycling, free of cost.
“We are unable to compete with them. So hence, we had to discontinue it with immediate effect. It was a paid service. People supported us to help us with the recycling. We had the support of in excess of 11 000 customers. A lot of them gave us the material free and some people didn’t,” Cherry said.
“People would separate the recyclables at source. We would collect the recyclables and we would deliver the recyclables to the SBRC [Sustainable Barbados Recycling Centre] for further processing.”
(emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb)
