Source : The Barbados Advocate, Regina Selman Moore

Government is presently seeking to strengthen its legislative framework, to better address environmental issues, including the management of solid waste.

This disclosure has come from Dr. Denis Lowe, Minister of Environment, Water Resources and Drainage. He was speaking yesterday at the launch of the University of the West Indies (UWI) Cave Hill Campus Recycling Initiative, at the Errol Barrow Centre for Creative Imagination.

“If we are serious about protecting our environment, it has to be and it is Government’s primary responsibility to ensure that there is a suite of legislation that enables the system to police the process and very often things that are environmentally unfriendly are not treated with the haste, the speed and the force, because of the weakness in the legislative framework. And one of our primary responsibilities in the early stages of this new ministry, is to ensure that that is corrected as quickly as possible” Lowe remarked.

According to Lowe, comprehensive solid waste management legislation is presently being drafted and this legislation will complement the Coastal Zone Management Act, the Marine Pollution Control Act, and the soon-to-be-introduced Environmental Management Act. Highlighting statistics that date back to 2005, Lowe pointed out that approximately 1 000 tonnes of waste is generated every day and this is taken mainly to the Mangrove Pond Landfill. Lowe therefore stressed that his government is committed to the 3 R’s
philosophy of reduce, reuse and recycle. A fourth “R”, that of recovery, has also been added, he said, and this forms part of Government’s commitment to adding waste-to-energy to the equation for addressing solid waste management in Barbados.

In fact, Government is currently examining the feasibility of pursuing a number of waste-to-energy options, including incineration and the conversion of landfill gas-to-energy, to not only increase its diversion rate of over 80 per cent, but to also contribute to increasing the use of renewable energy alternatives and reduce the dependence on fossil fuels, Lowe said.

For solid waste man-agement initiatives to succeed, however, Government will need to work in unison with the private sector and other agencies in a structured manner. To this end, Government will officially be opening the Solid Waste Management Centre at Vaucluse in St. Thomas, in partnership with Sustainable Barbados Recycling Inc., a predominantly Barbadian-owned private sector firm. This facility includes the operations of a transfer station for the processing and sorting of waste, a chemical waste storage facility for the safe storage of hazardous waste, as well as a materials recovery and compost facility. The latter is for the processing of con-struction and demolition waste, green waste and other recyclables into useful by-products. All waste haulage vehicles will therefore deliver their waste to the Solid Waste Management Centre, instead of having to traverse the landfill, Lowe said.