One man’s plan to deal with the mound of tyres that plague the Mangrove Landfill.
One company’s way of taking advantage of the Barbadian sun to its own benefit.
And concerns about the move of the island’s biggest recycler from its Cane Garden, St Thomas location to the proposed Bennetts, St Thomas site.
This week Heather-Lynn’s Habitat goes back to the care of the environment – always a hot topic – with a look at what companies are doing to earn money, save money and in their own way save the environment.
Two business people have come up with an idea to solve the problem of the growing mound of tyres at the Mangrove Landfill.
If Xavier Ros and Carrie Bell have their way, the recent fires in the tyre section of the landfill need not occur again.
The idea will involve recycling those tyres until nothing is left but three per cent unusable material. And all they want is for Government to transfer the environmental levy associated with tyres to them.
Ros and business partner Bell’s company is World Exchange (Barbados) Inc., and the business they are hoping to establish in Barbados would deal with end of life tyres.
“The problem at the moment is, Barbados’ options are limited in what you can do with the tyres. There is no blame getting pointed, it’s just you have limited options in what can you do,” Bell said.
“There is no use for them so they end up in the landfill. We have come out and said we can take control of the tyres if you are willing to put that levy to us. We can eliminate them and produce a recyclable and saleable product,” she said.
According to the legislation, the environmental levy is used to defray the cost of the disposal of the items, the cost of operating and maintaining refuse disposal sites, and for the preservation and enhancement of the environment.
The levy for tyres – other than motorcycle or bicycle tyres – is $20 per tyre and $2 per motorcycle or bicycle tyre.
The technology the company would be utilising would reduce those tyres to a number of by-products, Ros explained.
“Everything in a tyre is mainly reusable. When you treat the tyres in the way we intend to treat them.
From ten tonnes of tyres, – you have about 4.5 tonnes of heavy fuel which is usable mainly by power companies as raw material for their furnaces,” he said.
Then there is carbon black – which is 70 per cent of the composition of tyre and which can be reused in the manufacture of new tyres and as the main component in ink cartridges; the steel band inside can also be recycled and the seven per cent flammable gases can be channelled back into the plant.
“What you’re left with is three per cent of non-usable material,” Ros said.
He and Bell feel their business idea is timely given that there have been a number of fires in the tyre section of Mangrove, the last one occurring weeks ago.
Ros promised that the plant – “a simple operation” – would be emission and pollution free. They have sent their plans to the Sanitation Service Authority which has responsibility for the St Thomas landfill.
And the response?
“There wasn’t one yet,” said Ros.
