Tahna Weston
The Board of the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) is mulling a number of proposals from international companies to repurpose millions of used tyres that have accumulated at the Cooks Sanitary Landfill.
This is according to the Chairman of the NSWMA Board, Michael Joseph, who said currently there are more than three million tyres at the landfill, many of which have been there as far back as 2009.
The piling up of the tyres have been a major concern to many individuals including Member of Parliament (MP) for the area, Richard Lewis.
Lewis recently expressed dissatisfaction that the tyre shredder, which was installed at the landfill over four years ago, is not in use.
However, Joseph told Observer that one of the matters which the board has looked at is trying to reduce the volume of tyres at the landfill.
He said interest has been expressed by at least four international companies to get rid of and repurpose the tyres.
“We have sat down and we have requested proposals to deal with two issues, one is the tyre issue that we have down there. And we now have four companies that have engaged us and said ‘how can we submit proposals to repurpose, get rid of some?’
“And so we are waiting for … two more proposals and then the board would go through them and determine and then we will have a presentation from these companies on how to do that,” Joseph said.
The NSWMA chairman also said that, based on the realisation that burying garbage is not the future and is not environmentally the best option, the board is currently awaiting a proposal for the setting up of incinerators at the Cooks site.
“And as a matter of fact, from where I sit it [burying garbage] should have been abandoned a long, long time ago. And so, we are currently waiting on a proposal from a company to purchase and set up incinerators, which burns the garbage, produces by-products and at the same time creates clean air so you don’t have to deal with these spontaneous fires that create the black smoke that can be detrimental to health,” the NSWMA chairman said.
Joseph said all of the proposals from the international companies came through local individuals.
However, he said all the interested companies have long histories having been working in this area of dealing with landfills in Canada and Europe.
He is hoping that the tyre issue would be addressed by the end of this year, while the ceasing of burying refuse would also cease at this time if not by the middle of 2025.
He is optimistic that a facility would be set up during this timeline to abandon the practice of burying garbage and move to complete incineration.
In January 2020, the landfill commenced the shredding of used tyres to reduce the quantity at the site.
The Ministry of Health, on its Facebook page, showed the newly installed shredder, stating that the shredding of tyres had begun at the Cooks Landfill following the commissioning of the state-of-the art shredding machine.
At that time there were over five million used tyres at the landfill, with the machine expected to strip over 3,000 tyres daily, the ministry had promised.
