KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

With the risk of the Gua­napo Land­fill be­com­ing un­us­able with­in a year, the Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Co Ltd (SWM­COL) is now re­strict­ing in­dus­tri­al and com­mer­cial waste from the site.

Com­pa­nies that usu­al­ly dis­pose of their waste in the land­fill now have to go fur­ther to oth­er SMW­COL sites.

Ear­li­er this month, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les re­vealed that the For­res Park, Beetham and Gua­napo land­fills had reached ca­pac­i­ty.

How­ev­er, SWM­COL CEO Kevin Thomp­son told Guardian Me­dia that Gua­napo was at a crit­i­cal lev­el, adding that the site, which be­gan as a val­ley, was now a moun­tain.
 There­fore, SWM­COL pub­lished a pub­lic no­tice ad­vis­ing that the land­fill will no longer ac­cept in­dus­tri­al, com­mer­cial and in­sti­tu­tion­al (ICI) waste from Oc­to­ber 31. ICI waste refers to refuse from busi­ness­es, large in­dus­tries and in­sti­tu­tions, in­clud­ing con­struc­tion and de­mo­li­tion trash.

Thomp­son said SWM­COL’s pri­ma­ry role is to cater to res­i­den­tial waste, which Gua­napo will con­tin­ue to ac­cept.


“We are try­ing to pre­serve that res­i­den­tial col­lec­tion for the burgess­es of Ari­ma and its en­vi­rons. To do that, we have de­cid­ed that ad­di­tion­al waste, in­dus­tri­al and com­mer­cial from Ari­ma and en­vi­rons, need to be trans­port­ed else­where so that we do not in­con­ve­nience the gen­er­al pub­lic,” Thomp­son said.

SWM­COL felt that be­cause there is a small num­ber of in­dus­tri­al and com­mer­cial cus­tomers in the area, it was bet­ter the changes af­fect­ed them in­stead of res­i­dents.

Thomp­son be­lieves that be­cause those cus­tomers al­so pro­vide ser­vices to the pop­u­la­tion, they would un­der­stand the de­ci­sion. But the mit­i­ga­tion strat­e­gy is tem­po­rary.

Thomp­son said land­fills are not bot­tom­less pits and the Gua­napo Land­fill will need to stop tak­ing waste at some point. Once it does in the com­ing years, SWM­COL will im­ple­ment its waste re­me­di­a­tion plan. It has ac­cept­ed fund­ing from the UN’s Glob­al En­vi­ron­men­tal Fa­cil­i­ty for this.

In the mean­time, SWM­COL is con­duct­ing pre­lim­i­nary stud­ies for an en­gi­neered land­fill at For­res Park, Clax­ton Bay.

How­ev­er, Thomp­son said T&T needs an over­all be­hav­iour change, as it dumps too much waste, of­ten­times in ar­eas not spec­i­fied for dump­ing.
 As such, SWM­COL has re­launched its Char­lie cam­paign to sen­si­tise the pub­lic on waste dis­pos­al. But he says SWM­COL needs to meet with its com­mer­cial and in­dus­tri­al cus­tomers about re­duc­ing waste.

The Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties has host­ed pri­vate and pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions on up­dat­ing the In­te­grat­ed Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Pol­i­cy, Na­tion­al Waste Re­cy­cling Pol­i­cy and bev­er­age con­tain­er re­fund pol­i­cy. Thomp­son, how­ev­er, said while an over­all re­cy­cling frame­work from the Gov­ern­ment is nec­es­sary, every­one needs to take ac­tion.