Recycling company ready to clean up SKN

By Ryan Haas
Reporter-SKNVibes.com

BASSETERRE, St. Kitts-DR. JASON JONES, owner of St. Kitts and Nevis Disposals (SKANDIS), has clarified many of the rumours surrounding his company, stating that “SKANDIS is a disposable company, but our main focus is recycling and helping the environment”.

In an exclusive interview with SKNVibes Jones explained that SKANDIS is dedicated to bringing recycling to St. Kitts-Nevis despite numerous challenges.

“Recycling is not really a profitable endeavour to get involved with. It is pretty difficult logistic-wise because of where we are at and most of the materials will have to be shipped off, whether to Barbados, Puerto Rico or Miami.

“I don’t think we generate enough for there to be a big profit margin. The important thing for us is to do a service where we’re comfortable and we can get the stuff off of the island. We all saw the waste that was thrown back by Hurricane Omar a couple weeks ago,” Jones said.

Rumours had been circulating around the Federation since SKANDIS trucks were brought to the island that the company was being prevented from operating by the Solid Waste Management Corporation (SWMC), but Jones said SWMC has been supportive of their recycling initiative.

“We have spoken to Solid Waste and they are all for recycling. I don’t know if you are familiar with the situation at the landfill right now, but they have three cells and the first one is full already. We are generating a lot of plastic bottles every day and something has to be done about it.”

While SKANDIS is currently prohibited from opening full scale operations for various reasons, including waiting for a US $30,000 plastics compactor to be delivered, Jones said preparations are well under way for December when he expects the company to have a “soft opening”.~~Adz:Right~~

“We have the documentation to start preparing [land in Canada Estate] and we are just waiting for the other pieces of equipment. Right now we just need to get people excited about it. It is not something we have started and are going to stop. We have already invested a large amount of money in the equipment.”

He added that many of the business approached by SKANDIS have shown a great deal of interest in participating in a recycling program, and it is hoped that the general public will soon follow suit in requesting recycling services with their garbage pickup.

“We don’t want to do this ourselves. We have met with Solid Waste and we hope that one day we can meet with the other stakeholders, like the Bottling Company, and see if we can do it together because the government cannot do recycling themselves.

“It has to have community involvement. We have lit the match…and we hope that it is going to catch on to the point where everyone is going to want to do it,” Jones said.