[www.inewsguyana.com] – Caribbean Container Incorporated (CCI) has launched a recycling plant as it continues its drive toward environmentally sustainable ventures.
Multi-layered carton boxes, used to pack juices and milk, are now being recycled. The Tetra Pak recycling plants adds to the company’s operations and has already been scoping up waste paper and recycling it into corrugated packaging for many industries in Guyana and the Caribbean.
However, 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, which the company hailed as 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 is comprised of layer of paper and poly aluminum.
The fiber yielded from the recycling of the material will be fed into the company’s main recycling plant for the production of paperboard. The poly-aluminum 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 Pinehill, Nestle and Topco franchises have already started supplying their Tetra Pak waste to CCI for recycling, Managing Director Patricia Bacchus stated.
“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 extending 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.
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.
Hs said the legislation is not only to control waste, but also to entice business activities using waste.
According to Persaud, 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.
Persaud said that even all the filth 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 it not huge as we think it is,” Persaud stated. [Neil Marks]
Persuad must have his head in the sand to make the comment that there isn’t enough garbage for large scale recycling. If he gets off his high horse & walks around Georgetown, East Bank & West Bank Demarara, he would see the amount of trash that maligns the city…and people continue to trash the city. When will there be enough garbage?