Amidst our preoccupation with joining the rest of the international community to help save our planet from what is now widely believed to be the potentially devastating consequences of global warming, are we neglecting small but valuable opportunities to contribute to the protection of the environment right here at home?
To answer this question we perhaps need look no further than the opportunity afforded for a considerable reduction in the irresponsible disposal of solid waste by the raw material demands of a local company, Caribbean Container Inc (CCI)
CCI has declared that it has the capacity to recycle 10,000 tons of waste paper annually to feed its paper mill at Providence and the Company’s Chief Executive Officer Ron Webster believes that “in theory” at least that much waste paper is available here in Guyana.
And yet – believe it or not – CCI imports waste paper from elsewhere in the Caribbean even as thousands of tons of used corrugated cartons which the company is prepared to buy, litter our streets, clog our drains, place an additional burden on our solid waste disposal system and come back to haunt us during rainy seasons.
The opportunity that arises to do something about our clogged drains and garbage infested streets while removing – or at least significantly reducing – the need for CCI to import waste paper to meet its recycling needs is surely too significant to ignore.
CCI makes the compelling argument that local companies that are prepared to supply Old Corrugated Cartons – OCCs as the material is known in the trade – can benefit in two ways. First, business enterprises – importers, distributors, retailers – that generate large volumes of OCCs can actually make good money by selling the material to CCI.
Secondly, by helping to reduce the volume of OCC imports and, by extension, reducing production costs for the recycled cartons manufactured by CCI, local businesses can benefit from cheaper containers!
Of course, there is also the huge environmental spinoff, that is, the diversion of tons of OCC’s from our streets and waterways to the paper mill at Providence and the significant easing of the burden on our garbage collection and solid waste disposal systems which, at the best of times, function less than efficiently. OCC’s, incidentally, account for a significant proportion of our solid waste and it is estimated that for every ton of waste paper that is recycled approximately 3 cubic metres of landfill space is saved.
CCI is so upbeat about the prospects of meeting its OCC needs locally that the company is offering local suppliers the same price that it pays for imported waste paper. More than that, where OCCs are collected and stored in sufficiently large quantities CCI says that it will send its own trucks to do the collection!
The company’s CEO believes that the coincidence between the raw material needs of the paper mill and the opportunity afforded to do something practical to respond to urban waste disposal challenges ought to generate a measure of interest in the business community.
What is equally important, he says, is the economic opportunity for small vendors – social and voluntary organizations, clubs and youth groups – to subsidize their earnings. No less important, he says, is the opportunity afforded by this development for collaboration between CCI and institutions like the Environ-mental Protection Agency and the Georgetown Municipality.
CCI says that it is prepared to examine the feasibility of establishing collection points and even expanding its collection service in order to increase the volume of locally collected OCC’s and reduce its dependence on imported waste paper which, incidentally, it has to compete for with extra-regional competitors that are also in the recycling business.
And yet, one cannot help but think that if indeed the company can divert 10,000 tons of old corrugated cartons from our streets and waterways – with all of the positive environmental implications of this diversion – government, the private sector, the municipal authorities and the EPA – all of which stand to gain along with CCI – ought to ‘chip in’ to help set up a system that would ensure that the waste paper gets to the mill. The separation of solid waste to facilitate environmentally positive collection and recycling regimes is already required under the law in several countries and while we await the passage of such legislation in Guyana, broad support for meeting CCI’s raw material needs would at least be a worthwhile example of charity beginning at home.
