April eyed for meeting to recycle St James restaurants’ waste oil –health inspector

WESTERN BUREAU:

The St James Health Department has revealed that a highly anticipated meeting with London-based recycling company Blue Planet Renewables to discuss potential recycling of waste oil collected from restaurants in the parish, is expected to take place sometime next month.

Sherika Lewis, the acting chief public health inspector for St James, made the revelation on Monday while giving The Gleaner an update on the progression of talks between the two entities. Those discussions initially arose from reports last October that restaurants in Montego Bay were improperly disposing food grease into local drains.

“I spoke to the gentleman in charge of the company this morning, and he said that in April they are going to be coming down, so they are going to meet with me at that time. They did not say to me exactly when in April, though,” said Lewis.

“We are now trying to quantify the waste so that when the representatives come, they will have some idea of the amount of waste oil that the parish is generating, because they requested of me to quantify the waste for them,” Lewis added. “The vendors on the roadside are also going to be a big part of the campaign because they are some of the main culprits, since they are the ones that are close by the drains and they throw the oil there.”

The health inspector noted that based on investigations so far, some restaurants have been storing their waste oil in bottles, which sometimes end up being thrown away into the trash.

“What the restaurant operators are doing is storing the oil in bottles, and some of them are putting it out in the regular waste. We are trying to work with persons to say, do not throw them down the drain. But it is a work in progress, it is about behavioural change, because people just do not know that waste oil is dangerous for the environment,” said Lewis.

Last October, reports surfaced about an overflow of sewage at a section of Union and Harbour streets in the vicinity of the Baywest Shopping Centre in Montego Bay. Subsequent checks by the National Water Commission revealed the presence of fats and oils in the sewage, which the commission said contributed to the blockage and resulting overflow.

The same improper disposal of food grease was subsequently identified as a possible contributor to flooding in Montego Bay during heavy rains in November. At that time, the health department said that waste water from food establishments could also be contributing to the city’s perpetual rodent infestation problem.

VEXING ISSUE

The long-standing and vexing issue of improper waste disposal in St James was brought to the fore during last Thursday’s monthly meeting of the St James Municipal Corporation, when several councillors complained about repeated instances of illicit waste disposal across the parish and sightings of rats in the downtown area. The growth of the local rodent population has frequently been linked to improper disposal of food refuse, along with other types of solid waste.

Concerning disposal of food scraps along the roadway, Lewis said that a change in mindset is needed for persons to understand the link between that practice and the breeding of rats.

“We want to encompass health education in the change programme, and it is going to be a huge programme. One of the things about it is just about our general behaviour, because I was walking in the bus park a few weeks ago and I saw where the taxi men were eating food and just throwing it out on the ground. I asked, ‘Who are you feeding?’ and one of them said, ‘Dogs pass through’; and I said, ‘Dogs and rats pass through, so you’re feeding the rats,’” said Lewis.