It will cost an estimated $8.2 billion for the Government to create two landfills—one in Trinidad, the other in Tobago—to deal with our growing waste management problem. Dr Ahmad Khan, the director of the Basel Convention Regional Centre for Training and Technology Transfer for the Caribbean, said this figure excludes waste diversion, which is the prevention and reduction of generated waste through source reduction, recycling, reuse or composting.
Failure to reduce waste in the environment, Khan said, can cost the Government ten times more with its health bill because the exposure citizens face manifests in prolonged illnesses and diseases. Khan, who participated in the United Nations Environment Programme second Caribbean media training workshop in Suriname, said that governments in the Caribbean were lacking the political will to deal with waste management, which has become a growing and worrying concern.
Fifteen journalists from 11 Caribbean countries engaged in the three-day workshop, which concluded on June 19. Khan’s statement comes days after Local Government Minister Suruj Rambachan said that the Government was looking at the closure of Trinidad’s four landfills—Beetham, Forres Park, Guanapo and Guapo. Rambachan did not give a time frame for the closure of the landfills, but he admitted that Cabinet had accepted a draft national integrated solid waste policy.
Government has had to battle for years with fires and smoke that emanated from the landfills into communities and workplaces. Rambachan disclosed that the Government had received several proposals from interested investors who want to manage the landfills.
Khan, who played an integral part in the development and setting up of the model for the St Kitts and Nevis landfill in 2002, said that government paid US$3.4 million for a ten-year integrated approach to waste management. This was based on a population of 48,000 citizens. Using a similar equation for Trinidad, Khan said to consolidate our four landfills it will cost $7, 249, 769, 537, based on a population of 1.1 million, over a 25-year period.
Khan estimated the annual operating cost of the landfill at $165,000. This figure excludes waste diversion. Khan said his calculation could be 15 per cent less. The operating cost will involve collecting and dumping of waste, cost of labourers, equipment, upkeep of the landfill and security fees. Tobago, on the other hand, Khan said, is projected to cost $988,604,937 based on a population of 150,000 over 25 years, with no waste diversion. “The next step for us (Trinidad) is not to build more landfills but to consolidate them.”
Need for an investment strategy
The best site for Trinidad’s landfill, Khan said, is adjacent to Forres Park in Claxton Bay. “The soil conditions there are conducive to putting in a proper landfill.” Khan could not give a proposed site for Tobago. To generate financing, Khan said the Government could source a loan from the IDB or venture into a public/private sector investment, with the Government supplying the land, legislation, moratorium and tax incentives.The private sector can inject the money as well as manage and upkeep the landfill, he said.
He said a way forward was not to have a big landfill but a “waste segregation and recycling” programme. “It has to be done the same way we do an investment strategy for oil and gas projects...with the same concessions.” Should the Government take this route, Khan suggested they impose a monthly $10 garbage collection fee per household to generate revenue. He calculated that it costs the Government $45 per day to remove waste from one household.
“Right now people’s garbage is collected for free. In order to really make this thing work profitably people would have to pay for garbage collection services,” he said. “This is what former finance minister Karen Tesheira was trying to say, the cost of services government provide to citizens has to be recovered somehow.”
Lacking political will
Khan said there was need to look at a collaborative approach for integrated waste management at a sub regional level. Noting there were opportunities for the Caribbean to collaborate on waste management, Khan said the conference to parties, especially Basel, stipulates that waste could help stimulate economic activity by doing sub regional and regional recycling initiatives. These conventions all represent international treaties dealing with international trade and shipment of certain hazardous chemicals and wastes.
“If those delegates sign those conventions and agree to those decisions and the politicians are not understanding that, then the message is not getting back to them,” he said. To compound matters, Khan said legislation was not in place to manage T&T’s waste.
Khan said while the Environment Management Authority has been developing solid and hazardous waste rules, which would set the legislative agenda, the policy agenda is not there. “What is our policy on waste? How do we regard waste? It is just garbage or a resource? It is a cost to the taxpayer, or is it something we put out of sight and out of mind?” Khan said these critical issues needed national debate.
“The initiatives you need at the political level to make it a policy directive that waste is a commodity that can be managed better is not in place. So under those guidelines, I would say that the political will is not yet there to make waste as important as water, electricity and telephone. Waste management is also a public utility. It is part of the service that is.” Why has waste management been put on the back burner for so long? Khan said the cost factor could have been a deterrent.