Business ops in recycling

By Heather-Lynn Evanson | Fri, February 10, 2012 - 12:00 AM

More factories in Barbados should process recyclable materials and turn them into new products.

This was one of the ideas coming out of a CoRe Network Recycling Made Easy workshop, hosted recently by the Future Centre Trust at Pax Hill, Belmont Road.

While there are companies that collect recyclable materials from homes, businesses and community centres, only a few processing plants turn that material into various end-user products.

Vicky Merrick, project coordinator of CoRe Network, noted that there were companies processing used vegetable oil into biodiesel and certain types of household waste into mulch, but in most cases glass, plastics and metals are shipped overseas to be processed.

“We have a company here that was making tiles for our roofs out of old Coca Cola bottles,” said Merrick.

“The point is that there aren’t too many places in Barbados. We need more factories that are making this stuff here is what I’m trying to say,” she said as she went through a list of items that could be recycled in Barbados.

“We’ve talked about mulch. We’ve talked about tyres but most of what we collect, we ship overseas,” she told participants at the workshop.

“Paper, cardboard, metal, plastic; it goes to China. It goes to Canada. It goes to Colombia for the most part, so all of you young people, try and start businesses and factories,” Merrick said to secondary school students in the audience.

The project coordinator went on to reiterate that recycling not only reduced the amount of garbage that ended up in the landfill at Mangrove, St Thomas, but also earned foreign exchange for the island.

“When we sell that stuff overseas, we get outside dollars coming in and that is a good thing,” she stressed.