A solution to landfill

This planet that we call home has limited natural resources. 

The acceleration of technology due to the expediential increase of the computer’s co-processor since the end of the Second World War, which lead to fantastic advances in the human sciences and manufacturing, has in turn led to increased population growth and wasteful vanity consumption. Climate change is just one of the mechanisms that is a result of this industrial age that we are all a part of.  

Due to vanity only food waste now accounts for 50 per cent of the global waste with as much as 40 per cent of farmer crops being ploughed back into the ground because the appearance of the food is not perfect. Municipal waste is a growing global issue but thankfully there are alternative solutions to landfills that work for every size of community and need not cost governments money any longer but be seen as a revenue stream. In San Francisco waste is now being stolen as it is that valuable a commodity.  

A couple of months ago I wrote a previous letter regarding the alternatives to landfill for this country and while the discussion goes on about the location for the landfill in Grand Cayman for the next two decades between the current George Town landfill site or the proposed new Bodden Town landfill site rumbles on, the opportunity to save this country millions of dollars is lost in the wings of this argument. 

Bottom line 

The bottom line of the current debate is simple; Dart wants to develop the residential section of their parcels of land now and they can’t wait 20 years for the DEH to remediate the current site, so they are doing exactly the same as supermarkets do elsewhere in the world when they want a new superstore. Instead of waiting for the state to build the road junction leading to the green field site store they just do it themselves now and recover the costs over the life of the building. They also offer community projects as a way to sweeten the deal for the local population as well. If we cut to the chase and stop wasting everyone’s time it would be simpler.  

GT landfill site is a gold mine. It has 20 years of unsorted waste and hundreds of thousands of dollars of stone fill to create that mountain. If we honestly ask the Dart corporate what is their timescale to develop the first phases of the residential area adjacent to the GT landfill and then use that as a timeline to deal with the problem then government can make money and Dart can save money.  

Go private 

The solution is to privatise the municipal waste management on this Island and not just to one mega company either. Multiple local ‘trade and business licenses’ are better for government revenue than just one firm, which probably will be foreign and export the profits.  

Whilst this debate is going on there is a second major project being planned, which is the George Town cruising piers that are going to require – you guess it – thousands of tons of rock fill to be trucked from somewhere. So why not use the rock fill from the GT landfill to reclaim the land and at the same time sell parts of the landfill to private recycling firms to recover non-rock fill materials. The rock could be easily washed to remove debris from it as part of the separation operation. This will generate funds for the government by leasing out the recycling operation as was done for the scrap metal contract and reduce the cost of the new piers dramatically as the fill is already owned by the government. The two projects will run concurrently and the Dart corporation can develop their land in the meanwhile. 

Operations 

The current GT landfill is visible to the world and is still underfunded by government now. This is a common excuse for the mess. The new proposed BT landfill is going to incur extra costs by the mere fact that BT is far away from the two most densely populated areas and it is going to be operated by the same people. 

Then why are we to believe anything better is going to happen there; especially as it hidden away from sight. 

The For Cayman Alliance flyer recently put in the PO boxes at BT post office refers to 2001 and 2003 reports on the back cover. Both of these reports refer to a waste transfer station being required at the current GT site to reduce trucking to a more remote site. This transfer station would be the ideal location for sorting the recycling component out of the future waste and would be a complement to separation works of the existing landfill as it involves the same equipment. 

Creating another landfill – and that is exactly what BT will be under phase one of the development, if the For Cayman Alliance website is true, apart from the liner i.e. the engineered solution. Everything else proposed is already at GT landfill including the recycling centre. All the 21st Century stuff is in future phases to be built by the government along with the other six lined cells. Once again if the funding is not there can we trust the present operators to continue the lining of the other cells before starting to fill them? 

Clean up act 

Cayman needs to clean up its act now. Even if BT goes ahead as planned then it will still be three years before it is operational according to the information we are given. It is time now for either a government-run or better, still, a private sector scheme, which collects the recyclable waste either from source i.e. houses or from central locations and processes the waste for shipment off Island or in the future reprocessing here, which can be exported as capital added goods to be sold here and abroad thus improving the trade balance sheet for Cayman. It may even kick start the economy! 

These systems can start small and without huge investments thus allowing the local population to benefit bottom up instead of the typical mega scheme, which is top down and does little to benefit the average person. Caymanians are the most entrepreneurial people I have ever come across and I’m sure there will be no problems attracting local firms or start up firms to set up to the challenge that will remove all the salvageable materials from the waste stream. All the government needs to do is offer some concessions to local Caymanian firms as they do to overseas firm to do business here and business will happen tomorrow. As I say, the same can be done with the existing GT landfill and it could be gone within five years to a decade or sooner if the price is right.  

Recycling 

The DEH has had a recycling centre since the last government was in place and yet nothing appears to be happening. Is it lack of political will or just a funding problem? The usual excuse is the cost of shipping, yet thousand of empty containers go back to the US every year because we don’t export here. This is where government pressure on the shipping companies to offer better rates for full containers returning to the US for recycling purposes to assist the local businesses here and generate revenue for central government.  

There is another method for waste to energy power stations instead of burning the actual waste, which removes the burnable gases from the organic waste and uses these gases to burn and produce power then leave a clean medium grade fertiliser, which can be sold to farmers to improve their yield from the soil. These are Anaerobic Digestio plants. It is a tried and tested WTE system that can be used with any tonnage of material and is modular so can be expanded with population growth. In the UK there are dozens of these power plants. In 1995 I was a part of the team of consulting engineers who worked on the ‘Bran’s Sand’ sewage treatment plant, which worked on the AD principle, this was at the time the largest sewage treatment plant in Europe so the 200 tonnes of unsorted waste or less after the recycling waste has been removed would not be a real problem for this system. After all this is basically how landfills work. In any case it is just that the methane gases are captured and used instead of venting to the air and increasing the green house gases in the atmosphere.  

Just to set the story right with the mass burn system they use the waste steam after it has driven the turbine to produce electricity is used to dry the new waste feedstock prior to it entering the furnace. In Stockton upon Tees they take this a stage further and sell the steam to buildings in a district heating scheme. This potential could be done in Cayman using waste steam to power absorption chillers plants to provide district chilling. I understand that absorption chillers are commonly used in the Far East. The solution to deal with new waste is simple: Recycle everything apart from medical waste, which is currently burnt anyhow. Image separating out all metals, plastic, paper, rags and cloth, electronics, glass, builders waste, wood, food waste, cars, boats, waste oils, batteries, grease and cooking fats, garden waste, etc. to be recycled and either sold as bulk waste or manufactured in products to be reused here in Cayman and I said before, exported thus removing this burden from government costs thus allowing the national debt to be paid off quicker and providing a real benefit to our future generations of potential debt free country.  

Or we can just cap GT landfill and have to monitor and vent it forever and then face the same debate in 20 years time when BT landfill is full and we have an even more expensive problem to deal with.  

I have no idea what Dart proposes for the capping of the GT landfill. All I know is wet municipal organic waste with say 40 per cent moisture content, lack of oxygen and temperature over 77 degrees is great for producing methane, which I suspect will be the conditions under the liner material in this part of the world and whilst capping the landfill may work in colder climates, where if the temperatures are below 55 degrees, this prevents the bacteria producing methane works very well with little chance of buildup of explosive gas in a vented site. But I would be interested to know how effective it is in tropical humid climates on landfills less than 20 years old as this is the peak methane producing period. 

Sam Small