Solid waste management company Renew Bahamas has set up the first-of-its-kind materials recycling facility (MRF) in the Bahamas, to process residential and commercial waste.
The unit, commissioned by Bahamas Prime Minister Perry Christie, entailed an investment of $7m.
With a capacity to recycle up to 80t an hour, the facility is expected to reduce the risk of fires as cardboard and plastic would no longer be disposed of as waste at landfill.
Sprawled over 125,000ft2, the facility has been designed and constructed over a period of four months with the help of Canada-based recycling equipment supplier Machinex Group.
Renew Bahamas president and CEO Gerhard Beukes said: "What we are doing has not been done at this scale anywhere in the country or in the region.
"We can now say The Bahamas is an exporter of recyclate materials, which are being sold to customers on the global scene. It is also the start of our efforts to substantially reduce the negative environmental footprint of these troubled lands."
Renew Bahamas has been entrusted with operating and managing the city's landfill site by the Bahamas Government.
The MRF, armed with Machinex's sorting and baling technologies, will have 50 personnel.
Machinex Group project director Jonathan Menard said: " "Installing the first state-of-the-art MRF in the Caribbean Islands came with a number of challenges but, as a team, Machinex and Renew Bahamas demonstrated that the proposed model could work and that it could be reproduced elsewhere within the Caribbean Islands."
