6,000 tyres removed from Riverton dump

The Caribbean Cement Company has removed and burnt some 6,000 used tyres from the Riverton City dump over an 11-day period.

The announcement was made last week by Prime Minister Andrew Holness while giving an update on a memorandum of understanding between the Government and Carib Cement.

The pact, signed in July, will see the removal of two million tyres from the dump.

The prime minister said that the Riverton City dump was one of the Government’s greatest challenges, with the tyres forming a large part of the combustible materials in the area.

“The best solution to them, which is now being practised worldwide, is to have them incinerated in a managed process,” Holness said.

Darron Pinnock, production coordinator for the tyre-disposal project at Carib Cement, said that the tyres are transported from Riverton to the Carib Cement plant at Rockfort in east Kingston.

“Once at the kiln, the temperature is set to 1,400 degrees Celsius and the tyres are burnt to ash. This step prevents any gases from being released into the environment,” Pinnock explained.

He said that during the pilot phase of the initiative, 6,000 tyres have been burnt in 11 days. The representative said the company has the ability to burn 800,000 in a year and to rid the landfill of tyres in five years.

Carib Cement is responsible for the payment of costs relating to the offloading of the tyres, and both the Ministry of Local Government and the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation will share equally in the cost of putting the tyres on the trucks and transporting them to the kiln.