Jamaica: On the Move to Energy-from-Waste
“The management of all wastes poses serious environmental problems in Jamaica”, the local National Environment and Planning Agency gave account in 2021. Additionally, it is difficult to balance what is actually recycled.
The production of municipal solid waste alone reached 1,090,923 tons in 2021/22, not to forget 384,549 tons of industrial, commercial and institutional waste – altogether 1,475,473 tons, of which nearly 40 percent were organic and 15 percent “other” waste, but also material with recovery potential: 16.8 percent plastics, 9.0 percent cardboard, 6.6 percent papers, 6.7 percent textiles, 3.5 percent glass and 2.6 percent metals, the Development Bank of Jamaica gave account in June 2022. But the bank did not investigate the recovery qualities of particular waste, however, it defined the incineration potential of the waste compositions: 51.2 percent low and 41.1 percent high incinerable waste, 8.1 percent non-combustible and 0.6 percent undesirable waste. Later we will see why.
An uptick in illegal dumping
Most of the rubbish collected in Jamaica ends in landfilling. In 2021/22, the NSWMA – the National Solid Waste Management Authority – managed eight disposal sites. And had to admit that “correspondingly, there was an uptick in the incidence of illegal dumping across the island, with 388 reported dumpsites identified against 288 reported in 2020/2021.” Following NSWMA Executive Director Audley Gordon, the agency is trying “to increase drop off sites across the island that nobody should have a discarded laptop, tablet or cell phone and don’t know where to put it”. But it was and is not only the obviously rare space: As Thomson Reuters reported in 2020, the biggest landfill – Riverton – until 2014 operated without official permission, was plagued by fires, lacked regulation and suffered ever since from inadequate funding. Additionally, the “improper disposal of solid waste […] is strongly ingrained in Jamaica’s culture”, the NSWMA tried to apologize.
Risk of failing the goals
Already in 2016, the Public Defender’s Office’s report found out that “the NSWMA failed to fulfill its legal duty to safeguard public health of Jamaicans”. A Performance Audit Report, released in July 2022 by the Auditor General of Jamaica, still listed nine reasons why “Jamaica is at risk of not achieving its national goal to ‘manage all forms of waste effectively’ by the year 2030”. Among others, the paper underlined the absence of enabling regulations to firmly establish NSWMA as a regulatory authority and secondary the lack of any sanitary landfill in Jamaica; seven of the eight waste disposal sites were deemed inefficient and had outlived their life cycle. Furthermore, waste reduction initiatives were said to be insufficiently effective, the absence of sustainable waste reduction strategies was criticized, and several gaps in waste management resources were found: “Sustainable waste reduction strategies are yet to be implemented”. The report summarized that the management of solid waste in Jamaica – especially its collection – has been “a perennial public concern” in spite of approximately 32 billion Dollar allocated in the period between 2016 and 2021 – 17.5 billion Dollar and that more than half came from the collection of property tax.
Incineration, minimization and recycling
But what happens to the recovery potential Jamaica produces every year – the approximately 247,000 tons of plastics, 132,342 tons of cardboard, more than 98,000 tons of textiles, nearly 96,000 tons of papers, 51,750 tons of glass and more than 38,000 tons of metals, the Development Bank of Jamaica spoke of? The National Solid Waste Management Act – last amendment in 2017 – prescribes that the NSWMA may make regulations containing provisions in relation to “the incineration, minimization and recycling of solid waste”. The NSWMA itself is convinced that “we regulate Jamaica’s solid waste industry”. The agency is mandated per law to protect “effective management of solid waste. This is done through the collection of residential and commercial solid waste, enforcement of the NSWM Act and the management of eight disposal sites.” What about recycling?
166 tons sampled in seven years
Concerning plastics, the NSWMA was active in several “waste separation and recycling pilot projects”. In 2016, a six-month project focused on “solid waste reduction through waste separation – waste division and recycling”, resulting in 140,000 pounds (lbs) of plastic “collected”. Another half-year project in 2021/22 collected 5,000 lbs of plastic bottles, a “Plastic Recycling Pilot Project” lasted 18 months and sampled 33,580 lbs of plastic, a long-time project – the “Northern Belt Plastic Separation Initiative” – realized a collection of nearly 188,000 lbs, and three other waste separation campaigns provided no information. All in all, 366,580 lbs or 166 tons were sampled in seven years.
Overwhelming response of the population
But between March 2014 and March 2017, 3.3 million pounds of plastics – or well over 100 million bottles in Jamaica were recovered from the environment, says the Jamaica Information Service. Part of the treatment was and still is handled by the Recycling Partners of Jamaica (RPJ), an extended producer’s organization and the designated national recycling entity, formed by public and private partnerships with the Wisynco Group and the Government of Jamaica. In 2022, the RPJ ran six depots, wanted greater capacity and wished at least one depot in every parish. The Jamaica Information Service cited the Chairman of RPJ, Dr. Damien King, who said that “the overwhelming response of the population to recycling indicates the need for greater capacity to properly manage the disposal and processing of recyclables”. The Jamaican online-magazine Gleaner spoke of a collection rate of about 12.3 million bottles a month and even a “flooding” of cages and depots with plastic bottles, so the organization could not export the material fast enough. In the majority, this has nothing to do “with the monetary incentive, which works out to about one Dollar per bottle”: The people putting their bottles in the cages do not get paid and do not redeem the deposits. According to Wisynco, during its last financial year, which ended in March 2023, the RPJ collected 6.6 million pounds of plastic bottles and exported 5.4 million pounds. “In its current fiscal year, RPJ is expected to make payments of more than 600 million Dollar to its more than 1,300 independent plastic collectors, 26 third party truckers and 155 employees.” To make it clear: 600 million Jamaican Dollar are 3,834,786 US-Dollar or 3,571,624 Euro.
Little glass recycling
There is only little glass recycling in Jamaica. A website called New Green Recycling explains that the island initially had “a thriving informal glass collection system” but it was discontinued when the cost of collection and transportation to the markets exceeded the value. During the pandemic new glass was even harder to source because of increased bottle shortages and delays in shipping and increased freight costs. Now only a few Jamaican recycling companies accept the material as a local market is missed, and it is too expensive to ship due to the weight. The Red Stripe Corporation belongs to them, increased in September 2022 the bottle deposit for all of its returnable bottles and offers returns accepted “at wholesales across the island”.
Used paper well organized
Another important recycling material in Jamaica is paper. As the data portal trendeconomy.com refers to, the country exported recovered (waste and scrap) paper or paperboard worth 669,000 US-Dollar in 2022. The last exports – updated in February of 2024 – amounted to 515,068 US-Dollar, says the United Nations comtrade database. The World Integrated Trade Solution, edited by the World Bank, offers exports that totaled 2,453 tons to the value of 177,000 US-Dollar in 2022. However, the treatment of used paper seems to be well organized: Jamaica Recycles not only offers the service of so-called Priority Baling, an indirect document destruction service by compressing paper onto large bales and then exporting it directly to paper mills worldwide, for bleaching and pulping. Jamaica Recycles is also part of the Cellmark Inc. Group of Companies that call themselves “one of the World’s foremost providers of supply chain services to the pulp and paper industry”. By the way: In 2010, the Jamaica Business Development Corporation reported trials of a local workshop to convert banana waste – especially the trunk of the plant – into stationary and other products. And in 2020, the Jamaican online-newspaper The Gleaner introduced a professor at the Northern Caribbean University experimenting with spinning sugar cane and banana tree pulp into stationery.
Recycling of industrial effluent
Another waste treatment is conducted by the privately owned Caribbean Scrap Metals and Recycling Company. The enterprise is committed to providing standard industrial recycled metal, both ferrous and non-ferrous, but specialized in copper, brass, radiators and stainless steel. CM Recycling, located in Kingston, defines itself as “Jamaica’s most premier and technologically advanced recycling company, showing state of the art recycling technology and world-class customer service”. The World Integrated Trade Solution confirmed ferrous waste and scrap of stainless-steel exports from Jamaica in 2018 of 62 tons and 43,480 US-Dollar. According to data of the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC), Jamaica sold 30,500 US-Dollar in metals in 2021 – the 6th most exported product in Jamaica. The five top exports are aluminum oxide, refined petroleum, hard liquor, aluminum ore and processed fruits and nuts. The percentage of recycled waste resulting from these materials is unknown. However, according to the Organization of the American States, recycling of industrial effluent has been practiced by several industries since about the turn of the century, spearheaded by the bauxite/alumina companies operating in Jamaica. The “red mud” these companies produce is thickened, the liquid fraction collected, then channeled to sealed holding ponds, until it is said to be moved back to the plant.
E-waste collection planning á la Jamaica
The collection of electronic waste started late. In 2016, an enterprise team was named and commissioned “to manage the process of the Government’s waste-to-energy program”. Three years later, in February 2019, NSWMA Executive Director Audley Gordon told the local newspaper The Gleaner that “land has been identified to temporarily store e-waste”. But the property had to be retrofitted. And the overseas markets for the discarded electronic devices were still to be found. All the same, the public would soon “have to receive special instructions” on how to dispose of their e-waste. Until 2021-22, a Technical and Operations Committee continued to monitor the implementation of an e-waste project, and a truck was procured to transport the e-waste to the storage facility. In August 2022, NSWMA finally published that e-waste could now be dropped off at any of the four facilities. Inet Jamaica launched a website and began offering battery and electronic e-waste disposal, together with product and data destruction services to residents (collected by NSWMA). That happened three years later – or more precisely too late – as already in 2019, there was a need: “More than 30 expressions of interest to either bid on the waste-to-energy program or to collect solid waste, or both”, The Gleaner wrote.
Used tires – dispersed across the island
According to the latest NSWMA report, in Jamaica, it is estimated that more than two million used tires are generated per annum in Jamaica, and the disposal sites receive approximately 185,700 tires per year. During the reporting period 2021-2022, the NSWMA removed 11,743 tires from Riverton disposal facility and transported them to Carib Cement Co. Ltd. An agreement between NSWMA and Cool Energy Ltd. on end-of-life pneumatic tires leads to the extraction and production of pyrolysis oil. In phase I from 2021 to 2031, a national program provides the disposal of over two million tires located at the Riverton disposal site. The next phases between 2026 and 2031 will see development and implementation of an action plan “to facilitate the ongoing collection and disposal of end-of-life pneumatic tires at the other disposal sites across the island”.
An energy-from-waste sector
Already in October 2010, the Ministry of Energy and Mining published a draft paper on the National Energy-from-Waste Policy. It underlined that a new policy was developed to ensure a vision: “Jamaica is the regional leader in providing affordable and clean energy from waste contributing to a sustainable future”. This vision was to guide the creation of an energy-from-waste sector to establish a market for waste, opening up opportunities for investment in both the energy and waste sectors while achieving both energy and waste management goals.
Meanwhile, the plans have become more realistic. After a Waste Characterization Study funded by the Inter-American Development Bank, Ricardo Munroe, Manager at the Development Bank of Jamaica, is sure that Jamaica is now one step closer to realizing its plans to privatize waste management services: “The aim is to move away from open dumps to a more environmentally friendly method of disposing of our solid waste. Waste from households and businesses could soon be converted into energy or stored in sanitary landfills.” The bank declares Jamaica as “a good prospect for the implementation of waste-to-energy technology, which is part of a proposed plan to privatize solid waste management services”.
To a sustainable future
A Transaction Certificate documents that a funding of 800,000 US-Dollar will support the Government of Jamaica in aiming at the preparation of closure plans and designs for the Riverton Disposal Site, the preparation of studies to support a viable business case for a public private partnership (PPP) for a reputable private investor, and the re-orientation of the NSWMA to support the preparation of a viable business case for improvement of solid waste management in Jamaica. Practically, Prime Minister Andrew Holness identified two waste-to-energy-sites in November 2022, even without divulging the locations. And in January 2023, he proclaimed: “We have done the environmental, economic and financial studies to come up with a strategy that is going to transform municipal waste management in Jamaica, to move it from the deplorable state that it is in to one in which we can all be proud. We will be creating this circular economy in waste because waste will become a feedstock for electricity generation. So, very soon, waste will have value and we will close the Retirement and Riverton City dumps.”
(Published in GLOBAL RECYCLING Magazine 2/2024, Page 28, Photo: sezerozger / stock.adobe.com)
