The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A waste services provider is hoping to revive tyre recycling, but warned that the venture depends on receiving a higher price from the Government.

Ginny McKinney, head of Wastenot, told Tribune Business that her company had partnered with Battery and Tyre in a tyre recycling partnership that, for two years, produced material for use in road building in the Bahamas.

She added, though, that they were forced to halt because the economic were not working, with the Government “stonewalling” on providing a higher price per tyre.

Ms McKinney emphasised that the recycling venture had benefited the New Providence landfill by drastically reducing the volume of tyres being dumped into it, thereby removing a combustible, fire-producing material.

“One thing I’d like to revisit is tyre recycling,” Ms McKinney told Tribune Business in a recent interview. “We had the equipment and were doing it at one point, but we got stonewalled.

“We couldn’t do it for 25 cents a tyre, which is what we got under the FNM. We couldn’t get anyone to the table to discuss a higher price.

“We said then that we have a lot of money in these machines, and it’s not worth growing for this amount. It was good while it worked; we could do 700 tyres a day. You can see the huge piles of tyres we did right there at the landfill.”

Ms McKinney said Wastenot and Battery and Tyre were forced to cease the recycling initiative three to four years ago.

“We were trying to get a co-operative of all the tyre people, and that’s definitely something we can pursue,” Ms McKinney added.

“We have the material to take it [the tyre] down to, not as small as we want to get it, but if we can get a decent price we can take it down to a crumb.”

Rather than export the ‘output’ from tyre recycling, Ms McKinney said it could be put to good use here in the Bahamas, as a rubber material that was useful for road building.

“Rather than send this thing away, we have real uses for it here,” she explained. “It’s a very good addition to roads, especially in tropical areas. The very nature of the road is improved with the addition of the tyre.”

The tyre recycling proposal is well-timed, given the frequent eruption of fires at the New Providence landfill in recent weeks. The associated smoke and fumes have blanketed nearby residential areas, and wider New Providence, creating health and environmental problems.

Schools in close proximity to the landfill have been forced to close and shift operations elsewhere, and both its manager, Renew Bahamas, and the Government are coming under increasing pressure to resolve the problems.

Wastenot is part of the reformed Bahamian Waste Resources Development Group (WRDG), which has also submitted an offer to remove green and wood waste streams from the landfill, and instead recycle them into compost and mulch.

This, it believes, would divert 25 per cent of the existing waste streams away from the New Providence landfill.

Apart from freeing-up capacity at the Tonique Williams-Darling Highway facility, Ms McKinney said in a previous interview that WRDG’s plans would remove a “volatile component” that was helping to “feed” the frequent fire outbreaks at the landfill.

WRDG, whose other members include BISX-listed Bahamas Waste, Impac and united Sanitation, submitted its proposal to the Government at the beginning of March and is now awaiting a response.

Ms McKinney said the consortium had already “proven itself” in mulch/compost recycling through the nine-year involvement of several members in the Green Systems venture, whose success had shown their latest proposal was “not pie in the sky”.