New Tera Pak recycling plant launched...

New Tera Pak recycling plant launched…

May 24, 2014 News

Guyana’s garbage not enough for large scale recycling operations— Persaud said

Multi-layered carton boxes, used to pack juices and milk, are now being recycled by Caribbean Container Incorporated (CCI), in a continued drive toward environmentally sustainable ventures.
The Tetra Pak recycling plants adds to the company’s operations; it has already been scoping up waste paper and recycling it into corrugated packaging for many industries in Guyana and the Caribbean.
But that conversion of waste paper was not enough to fulfill the company’s long term development plan. As a result, it entered into a joint venture with Tetra Pak, the world’s leading manufacturers of food processing and packaging solutions.
Tetra Pak provided the main recycling equipment and CCI undertook installation and the supply of controls, motors and other components.
The fiber yielded from the recycling of aseptic packaging waste, which comprises layer of paper and poly aluminium, (or what many known as the plastic lining in the juice and milk cartons) will be fed into the company’s main recycling plant for the production of paperboard.
The poly-aluminium component will be baled and stored separately, to be subsequently converted into a value-added by-product.
Already, CCI has commenced collection of Tetra Pak waste locally, and also from Jamaica, Trinidad and Barbados.
The Pine Hill, Nestle and Topco franchises have already started supplying their Tetra Pak waste to CCI for recycling, Managing Director Patricia Bacchus stated.
The need to import waste for the new plant is the same when it comes to the company’s original operations; it has experienced a shortage of supplies of old corrugated cardboard locally.
“This has resulted in us having to procure waste cardboard overseas and import into Guyana, resulting in an exorbitantly high cost when ocean freight is added,” Bacchus stated.
And so, the company has extended its initiative to collect local waste cardboard. Previously it depended on 15 private suppliers to collect and supply it with material, and it also depended on private companies to supply their cardboard waste.
It is now collaborating with waste disposal companies. An example of this is its arrangement with Puran Brothers Waste Disposal Service, which has allowed it to place a 20-feet container at the Lusignan, East Coast Demerara landfill for cardboard collection.
The company has also placed cardboard receptacles at the Stabroek Market Square and is in the process of setting private collection points in Lethem, West Demerara and Berbice.
Minister of the Environment and Natural Resources, Robert Persaud, said that the government is soon to introduce legislation to manage solid waste, which has been a “plague” in recent years.
He said the legislation is not only to control waste, but also to entice business activities using waste. He said that the new Solid Waste Bill will provide incentives to recycle waste and move the garbage problem from being a burden to being something of economic value.
“If you are able to put an economic value to waste, people themselves will change their habit, will change their attitude in terms of how they approach waste,” Persaud said.
Even so, he anticipates the same problem CCI has been experiencing with the shortage of materials.
Persaud said that all the garbage around the city and elsewhere, including at the major Haags Bosch dumpsite would not be enough to sustain a large scale recycling operation.
“If we have a proper collection process and operation, we will soon find out that our waste production is in fact not huge as we think it is,” Persaud stated.
He said that proposals for solid waste operation from the Haags Bosch site had to be scaled down because studies have shown that there is not an adequate amount of waste to support and sustain a large scale operation.
“And that is the reality; our production of waste is in a deficit.” (Neil Marks)