The Georgetown Mayor and City Council (M&CC) is to launch a composting project with a $28m capital outlay that will target 25 tonnes of waste daily from the Stabroek and Bourda markets and create jobs for 25 persons.
A release on Wednesday from the Ministry of Communities said that the project is being led by Sanitation Director at the Georgetown Municipality, Walter Narine. The groundwork is set to begin after the council’s 2017 budget is read and with the required approval from the Environmental Protection Agency.
The project will initially focus on two municipal markets: Stabroek and Bourda.
“When we would have examined the two markets; we realised that they generate on a daily basis, 25 metric tons of food waste. These are perishable cash crops which were not sold and the vendors would have discarded and tossed them out,” Narine explained, according to the release.
Noting that this is the type of waste that reaches the landfill on a daily basis, he said that the intention is to take the 25 tons of waste and convert it into compost.
He said that the compost would then be marketed as manure/fertiliser at a minimal cost to the National Agricultural Research Extension Institute (NAREI) and to cash crop farmers.
He said that apart from the financial gain from the composting project, it is also likely to see the expansion of the lifespan of the sanitary landfill at Haags Bosch, East Bank Demerara.
The release said that a report compiled by Habeeb Khan highlighted that 50 percent of all waste generated in Georgetown was organic matter and that everyone stands to benefit should at least 30 percent of that waste be diverted from the landfill. This will also reduce costs since moving organic waste to Haags Bosch stands at a monthly figure of $1.2M.
Apart from the market waste, the compost will also encompass vegetation from the road shoulders, sawdust, trimmed tree branches and weeds.
The raw material will be processed daily in a fenced area by municipal employees at the Princes Street facility with the incinerator. The project, in its initial phase, should provide employment for 25 persons from nearby communities to operate and manage the compost, the release added.
“We are very excited to have this project come to fruition. We have bins already at the markets so vendors will dispose of their waste there and then we will have them transported to the site”, Narine said.
Narine said that the project will require $28m in capital investment. The potential return in the first year is $10m minus expenses and he said it has huge revenue generating potential of $87m annually using waste from only two markets.
“In the long term, I would eventually like to see households bringing their food scraps to the municipal compost and we pay them for it. Schools can also get involved with kitchen gardens which they sell on market day to generate revenue for the school”, he added.
Georgetown Mayor, Patricia Chase-Green, in endorsing the project, said it accords with government’s green agenda and the push towards a green economy.
