Government to close Beetham, Guanapo Dumps

GOVERNMENT is planning to close down landfills throughout the country and replace them with “a modern, scientific method of waste capture and disposal,” Planning Minister Camille Robinson Regis has said.

The transition will hinge on a nationwide waste recycling project, already started by the Environmental Management Authority in January, the Planning Ministry said in a release yesterday.

This is part of the Government’s objective of “engendering an environmentally sustainable culture” to improve the current state of waste management and disposal system with efficiency, Robinson-Regis said.

Challenges to the current system include an inefficient solid waste collection and disposal system, a non-existent hazardous waste treatment facility, fixed landfills that are either already at, or bordering on the point of saturation, and increasingly indiscriminate dumping by citizens. These are manifestations of poor levels of environmental consciousness, a heavy industrial base, and a growing population, inevitable giving rise to public health hazards, disease spread, wildlife threats and environmental degradation, the release said.

Citing figures from a 2010 solid waste management report, Robinson-Regis noted the main household waste streams consist of organic material (27.15 per cent), plastics (19.17 per cent), paper (18.77 per cent) and glass (10.15 per cent). Because there is no segregation of waste in households, even recyclable wastes are destined to the almost-filled-to-capacity landfills in Guanapo, Beetham and Claxton Bay. “As of 2010, with a population of 1.3 million inhabitants, TT had a waste generation rate of 700,000 tonnes annually, or 1.5 kilograms per capita per day. It is estimated by 2020, the country will be generating 1.4 million tonnes of municipal solid waste per year at this rate, she said.