Common sense of recycling waste

Waste that is recycled by an industrial process into marketable products is a raw material of that industry. It comes at a cost to the manufacturer in addition to collection, storage, equipment, building and land.

When a tipping fee is charged by the manufacturer as processor of recyclables, for delivery of raw materials to his plant, his profit is increased by elimination of the cost of collection involved in transport.

When a manufacturer collects raw material for processing only on condition that payment is not made for the raw material, then the incentive to supply pre-sorted raw material no longer exists.

Instead of sorting household waste, unassorted waste will be dumped for collection by the Sanitation Service Authority (SSA) as the statutory body responsible for that service as disposal of solid waste compensated by taxation.

This anomaly occurred on the imposition of a tipping fee for delivery of recyclable material to a trending monopoly. It stifled the growth of  healthy competition in what remains of manufacturing industry in Barbados.

The fly in the ointment is a tipping fee which is misapplied to transporters of raw materials to recycling plants, of sanitary landfilling as reclamation of exhausted quarries for profitable land use.

Common sense demands revocation of the tipping fee for delivery at the recycling plant for solid waste as a corollary of voluntary pre-sorting of garbage in households and business places for disposal.

– LEONARD ST HILL