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(CNS): The Cayman Islands must do better at reducing the amount of rubbish it generates even as the country awaits a deal with Dart to take over the waste-management programme. A new report from the Office of the Auditor General found that the government has made no progress on targets set more than seven years ago to cut the amount of trash going to the dump every day. Each person in Cayman produces around five kilos of waste per day, more than five times the global average. But there are almost no strategies in place to help reduce commercial or residential waste.
In a new report released Monday, Auditor General Sue Winspear and her team focused on how Cayman is fairing on the UN Sustainable Development Goals and other environmental-related targets that governments have set over the last few years. While she has found the government is generally far behind on almost all sustainability-related targets, there are some areas where things are particularly bad.
When it comes to waste management, despite spending almost a decade planning to address the country’s dependence on an unsustainable landfill, improvements are extremely limited. In 2014 the government published a strategic policy statement that set the ball rolling for a waste-to-energy facility. Over the last ten years, the situation in relation to waste management has not improved at all, despite Dart’s efforts to cover up the old Mount Trashmore.
The audit office found that prior to 2017, the government’s data on rubbish was not measured properly and was inaccurate. But over the last six years, the waste produced per head has increased, and each person now generates an average of 11 pounds every day, more than five times the global average. In 2021 each person in the Cayman Islands generated about 3,600 pounds of waste throughout the year.
Cayman has a small population relative to the number of tourists that come to the islands each year, leading to an assumption that this must skew the numbers. But there is no clear link, and what limited evidence there is appears to show that visitors are not adding a significant amount to the rubbish pile.
In 2019, when the Cayman Islands’ population was about 70,000 and had around 2.3 million cruise and stay-over tourists, the country generated over 133,000 tons of rubbish. But in 2020, when the total number of visitors for the year fell dramatically due to COVID and the resident population dropped slightly, the total waste generated actually increased over the previous year. In 2021 it fell to 126,000 tons, but the rubbish generated by residents and businesses here is still among the highest in the world per head.
While generating significant amounts of rubbish, only around 2% was recycled, according to the OAG report. But that fell in 2021 and likely declined even more recently with the end of glass recycling. Since Dart announced it was not replacing its glass crusher, which it had been using to divert the country’s used glass into construction and fill, glass is now being sent to the landfill.
Winspear described the amount of waste being recycled as negligible, adding that it is significantly lower than other leading global economies. But countries with high recycling rates generally have government policies that make it easy for households to recycle waste, as well as funding and financial incentives, clear performance targets and policy objectives, none of which appears to exist here.
In March 2021, the government signed a project agreement with Waste Solutions Cayman Ltd, a consortium led by the Dart Group, the country’s largest developer and wealthiest land owner, for an integrated solid waste management system (ISWMS). The ReGen project is a public–private partnership where Dart et al will design, finance, build, operate and maintain the ISWMS in return for monthly payments from the government.
Negotiations on that deal do not appear to have gone very well. Premier Wayne Panton, who is leading the talks, has stated on a number of occasions that the March agreement appears to have been premature, given the cost gaps and other unresolved issues. The discussions towards financial close are ongoing and are now expected to be concluded in May 2023, some five and a half years after Dart was selected as the preferred bidder.
It is now unclear when the facility will be operational, but the government has indicated that it will be until at least the end of 2026 before the main component of the waste-to-energy plant is finished.
The decision to focus on burning garbage to create renewable energy will undermine the incentive to educate the country or introduce policies to encourage more sustainable approaches to waste management, such as reducing the quantity and type of goods we import or facilitating reuse, up-cycling and composting, as well as traditional recycling.
Although the auditor general did not look at plans by the government to introduce a single-use plastic ban, that local goal also appears to have stalled. While the impact of COVID was cited as the reason for the delay in rolling out the ban in January 2021, a revised target of October 2022 has been and gone. The PPM-led government created a steering committee in July 2019 to shape a policy to ban some single-use plastics, such as plastic bags, straws and take-out food containers. That committee has not met since.
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