M&CC to build food compost facility to promote waste separation

…Canadian company signals interest

The Georgetown Mayor and City Council (M&CC) is looking to construct a compost facility at its municipal Solid Waste Management Department compound on Princes Street, Georgetown.
The Council’s Director of Solid Waste Management, Walter Narine, told Guyana Times in an interview that design of the facility has been completed, and in this regard, the project’s budget is included in his department’s 2024 budget estimate. He said the goal is to have the facility operational by mid-2024, given that M&CC is hoping to amplify is waste management efforts around the city.

“The plan for 2024 – even if it’s not mid-year, the latter part of the year – we’ll have at least two or three constituencies fully engaged in waste separation, and we take that separated item component of the waste and rework it, and we do compost with it. Because I cannot sit here another year and oversee waste being disposed like this,” Narine declared.
The idea, he said, is to have Georgetown citizens separate their food waste from other wastes, including industrial, household, biomedical and radioactive wastes. Food waste will then be taken to the facility to be decomposed, and citizens would either keep their compost for agricultural activities or leave it at the facility to be repurposed.
Narine is optimistic that the project would allow M&CC to save revenue that is currently being used to collect waste in bulk monthly.
“Right now, we are giving each constituency one clearance per week, and that bill is $23 million for the Council every month; so, if we should increase collection for those constituencies, make it two times collection, you see our cost will go up, and our revenue base has not increased for the last three to five years…so I’m confident that if we take that food waste component out, we’ll be able to manage waste collection better.”
Further, Narine disclosed that a Canadian company has already signalled its interest to assist Council with establishment of the facility.

Benefits of compost
Compost is used to improve soil structure through the addition of carbon, and provide plants with nutrients such as nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K), which improve the physio-chemical and biological properties of the soil.
Compost also plays a key role in helping the soil retain moisture, and would increase the earthworm and microbial population which serve as biological controls against unwanted pests.
Countries such as France, China, Canada and Japan are among the many states that use compost to boost their food production sectors.