7 News Belize

The Waste Management Transformation Still Evolving
posted (October 23, 2013)
As recently as two years ago, Belize City residents had to be coping with an intermittent stench wafting out of the dump-site at mile two on the western highway.  But, in just two months Solid Waste Management in Belize has gone through a quiet revolution.

Since August, the garbage generated by Belize City and San Ignacio residents has been trucked up to the Mile 27 sanitary landfill.  In the months of august and September, it amounted to almost four thousand metric tons of waste, that's about two hundred, 40 foot trailers. It's been remarkably smooth going so far, and today the Solid Waste Management Authority held a National Solid Waste Management Policy, Strategy & Plan - Stakeholder Workshop to come up with a long term plan.  Gilroy Lewis told us more:

Gilroy Lewis - Project Director, Solid Waste Management Authority
"The workshop at this particular stage is to identify the issues, the challenges, and the opportunities for waste management currently, and in the future. So, the first step is to identify the issues and challenges, then, from that now, those can be converted into a series of objectives. Then, there is much more to come, once we are able to come together and crystalize a policy and strategy, at least now for 20 years, which would provide us with a roadmap on how to manage waste going forward, because there are significant things need to be discussed. For instance, recycling, we would need to set targets to achieve a certain percent of recycling as a function of the total waste mass. As we speak, we are only recovering about 2.5% of the material as recyclable from the total waste stream."

To get more recycled waste, the Authority says there will have to be source separation – which means that you'll have to start sorting your garbage between waste and what can be recycled.  But that's not going to start just yet. 

Presently, the biggest problem at the waste sorting facility are discarded Tree limbs and eradicated dogs.

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