fp Turks and Caicos

The country’s plan for a state of the art waste collection system is still on hold while the government negotiates with two power companies expected to collect garbage fees, projected to be $25-30 a month for residential collection.

“Both of them (PPC Ltd. on Providenciales and Turks and Caicos Utilities Ltd. on Grand Turk) have expressed some concerns about the proposal, and these concerns will have to be addressed by the Advisory Council before we can proceed,” government CEO Mark Capes told the Consultative Forum at its meeting Nov. 9.

The fee collection process, the amount of fees and whether fees will be mandatory for all power customers are all part of ongoing contract negotiations, Capes said. Commercial fees are projected to be $125 per ton.

The attorney general is drafting the contract with Turks and Caicos Environmental Management (TCEM) that includes technical specifications, a process that is “quite a complex bit of work,” Capes said.

Given all that still must be done, “It is unlikely at the moment that the project will commence before early 2011,” he said.

When it does begin operations, TCEM will clean up all the nation’s landfills, creating a single state of the art landfill on Providenciales to receive garbage from all other islands.

Meanwhile, private company TCI Waste Disposal Services began recycling in October for its customers on Providenciales.

The company provides separate blue bins for recyclables, which include:

• Aluminum soda and beer cans
• PET 1 plastic bottles and containers
• Glass bottles and jars without lids
• Cardboard (no waxed, food or drink cartons)

TCI Waste’s facility in Blue Hills separates these items for further processing. Cans and cardboard will be compacted and put into containers to be shipped to recycling plants where they can be processed and reused.

Glass items will be crushed in the plant and recycled into aggregate, which can be used to build roads and fill pot holes.