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Glass recycling plant inaugurated Tuesday
by The Daily Herald
Posted: Mar 16, 2006 14:49 UTC
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MARIGOT - St. Martin’s first glass recycling plant was shown to environmental officials and journalists during a press conference at the Plantation tourist attraction in Mont Vernon, French Cul-de-Sac, yesterday.
The plant, which is operational and located on rented land opposite Plantation, is run by Antilles Recyclage, which obtained the contract on the recommendation of French company Eco-Emballages, a leader in the national packaging/waste disposal market.
Interested officials attending the presentation included Director of Technical Services and Environment Max Ogoundélé, vice-president of the Environmental Commission Pierre Aliotti, the Commune’s General Services Manager Albert Brookson, and Mayor of St. Barths Bruno Magras.
St. Barths is also making use of the glass recycling service. Previously St. Barths was shipping out glass to Bordeaux and is already collecting steel and aluminium for recycling in accordance with its own contract with Eco-Emballages.
The specially adapted glass pulveriser turns glass into rounded materials using trommel screens to size the material to what is needed and at the same time eliminates foreign objects, such as corks, bottle caps, lids, straws etc, from the process.
The 120,000-euro machine consists of a loader, a conveyor and a pulveriser, and has a capacity of processing two tonnes an hour. The glass product is then turned into sand and gravel for use on the island. The sand, for example, is ideally suited as bedding for pipes.
“St. Martin and St. Barths between them have about 1,000 tons of glass per year to process,” explained Colin Leese, Director of Antilles Recyclage, who gave a demonstration of the machine in operation.
Aliotti welcomed the Commune’s recycling initiative, calling it “the perfect idea.”
He noted that there were 38 collection points for glass bottles on the French side, representing one collection point per 900 people. He said the objective was to increase this by 10 more in 2007, to bring the figure down to one collection point per 500 people.
Director of the recycling department for Eco-Emballages Yvan Liziard noted one of the factors influencing the decision to have a recycling plant in St. Martin was the saturation of the European markets for glass recycling.
Eco-Emballages set up a complex system for the selective collection and recovery of household packaging waste, in 1993. French businesses hire the company to handle their recycling and members pay a financial contribution in return for having their legal obligations in the area of recycling discharged.
Revenues are shared with local authorities who are then responsible for collecting household waste in their area. The company pays participating communities according to tonnage collected, and pays for the recycling and transportation of materials.
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