St. Maarten Private Eye

My Name is Georgino Barnes and I was also at the presentation from Eco-Dec. I have followed the presentation carefully, to get a good understanding how the company processes the waste. I did further research afterwards to learn as much as possible about this waste treatment from the perspective of both the companies and the environmentalist groups. What I have learned so far is the following:

Eco-Dec refered to their process as MBT (mechanical biological treatment), but further research revealed that it is actually a BMT (Biological mechanical treatment) process. The difference between the 2 is that MBT uses mechanical methods first to seperate recoverable material from the organic before biologically processing it. BMT does ithe process in reverse by first letting the mix waste biologicaly degrade and there after sperate the recoverable materials from the compost. Both process are theoretically the same but each take a different approach in processing waste.

I studied numerous websites from MBT/BMT plants to learn how many more methods are there in processing waste. There is one company "Arrow Bio" that uses the MBT approach and with the organics and paper have them go through a process to produce Biogas. Biogas is viewed by many envionmental groups as a green gas as opposed to petrol gas. What is remarkable about the process from Arrow Bio is that with the amount of gas they produce they can generate 5 times the amount of energy that the plant actually requires to operate.

One optional product mentioned by Eco-dec in the presentation is the production of RDF (refuse derived fuel). Eco-Dec's claim is that it is safe and non toxic and can be used to produce energy, although the dutch side wouldn't be able to produce enough to supply a small power plant. Further research about RDF reveals that many environmental groups around the world oppose this product because it contains high quantity of plastics. Burning of RDF result in exhaust emission equal to that of diesel engines because RDF is a petrol based fuel.

Another MBT plant that I have researched on the internet is ISKAH from Germany and it bears very much resemblance to that of Eco-Dec. The website contains several brochures including a 20 page book describing the different configurations, processes, advantages and disadvatages as well as numerous exisitng plants in operation, or to be built soon.

One last waste treatment company I will mention is Wastec Ltd from England. Their company is more flexible in their process of being able to adapt to different methods of waste management such as MBT, waste to energy and other processes. Most St. Maarteners including me as well are already against and incinerator (waste to energy). Wastec developed a method for sorting waste in Material Recovery Treatment (MRT) that is more relaiable and efficient than traditional MRF that has to rely heavily on manual labour just to keep things running efficient. The difference is a device called the Kinetic Streamer.

What the kinetic streamer does is take mixed waste and devide them into 2 primary groups; the flimsy materials and the rigid materials. Once devided into these 2 groups it became alot easier and efficient to seperate the materials using exisitng methods, without having to rely much on manual sorting.
Wastec later realised that their kinetic streamer can be easily adaptable for many different kinds of waste treatment where there was also a need to recover materials, most popular of them is the MBT.

I have personally contacted this company and requested a brochure and video to observe and understand the process based around their kinetic streamer. What I have seen so far is even yet another alternative still for St. Maarten or even have it incorporated with an MBT sytem. Even batteries and other items that other waste companies would try to collect seperately have gone mixed in the system and got sorted out. Ideal for when in the early stages of recycling and re-educating the people.

My whole opinion in all of this is that when we do finally incorporate waste management plant here on st. Maarten we should look carefully at what materials/products we can produce in order to profit from the waste we created. Further more also see a way of gradually recovering what materials there is still recoverable from the dump, as well as remove the most of the dirt in order to enlargen the pond again. This way overtime we can enalrgen it for both historical values as well as enlarging the reservoir to collect rainwater from the hills.

Which ever way you look at it, our dump is no longer the answer due to the amount of garbage produced by both residents and visiotrs alike. The time has come for an alternative right now.