Today’s news that Meadowlands has partnered with Cadwell Inc.to transport waste out of St. Maarten is most welcome. While suppressing the foul-smelling underground fires and their flare-ups at the dump understandably has priority, a structural solution for the long-saturated landfill is also urgently needed.
Such would obviously have to include proper separation, recycling and processing of what remains, possibly through incineration and/or gasification to produce energy. One element simply cannot work without the other if the best result is to be achieved.
But the required comprehensive approach doesn’t mean there is no room for initiatives such as this one. The venture also shows that it does not always have to be government or its agencies that come up with the answers, as the private sector is perfectly capable of doing so too.
St. Maarten may not have a centralised publicly-owned waste management company like various other islands, but some of the local garbage collectors have invested in improvements and remain willing to do so. It was recently reported that another area had switched to individual household bins rather than only a big dumpster in the neighbourhood, which makes people more responsible for their trash and will allow for waste separation from home in the future.
These may be considered baby steps, but they are important to help things get going in the desired direction. The feasibility and any potential cost to the taxpayer of the project in question must be carefully analysed, of course, especially if “other stakeholders and government would join” as suggested.
One aspect to keep in mind are current developments regarding waste processing and recycling. The British High Commission agreed on Monday that the United Kingdom (UK) will take back 42 containers filled with plastic waste shipped to Malaysia without the correct import permits.
There are apparently some 300 containers stuck at Penang Port of which several countries had agreed to take back 200. Dozens of mostly unlicensed recycling factories have cropped up in Malaysia since China stopped taking more than 7 million tonnes of the world’s trash annually in 2017.
The latter has led to a global glut of plastic waste, which is affecting prices for recyclables and the industry in general. Just food for thought.
