Recycling companies grow on used paper, metal

There may still be a few abandoned vehicles lying around the countryside, but by and large this once common blight has been removed from the nation’s roads and neighbourhoods. Why? It’s all about the growing value of things we no longer use. News Five’s Kendra Griffith explains.

Kendra Griffith, Reporting
To the untrained eye these old car parts, scrap metal, and cardboard boxes may look like garbage, but for the owners of the Belize Recycling Company it’s cash.

Adriana Uribe, Manager, Belize Recycling Company
“We started out by recycling only paper then we began to recycle metals.”

The company opened it doors in 2005 and either buys the materials from individuals and businesses or has it donated. Adriana Uribe is the manager.

Adriana Uribe
“In a month we collect approximately twenty-eight to thirty tons of paper. Of cardboard, we collect about eight to ten tons. But the types of paper we collect the most are white, coloured paper, and newspaper.”

From their collection depot on St. Jude Street, the paper is sent to Fairweather Street where it is separated and packaged.

Carmen Robles, Supervisor
“It can’t go together, it has to separate, newspaper with newspaper, colour with colour, white, lone white or black and white with black and white, so it can put together.”

“When we have books you have to tear the books, it can’t go stapled or steel or with plastic or any garbage. Sometimes they bring paper clips in there. It can’t go with that, so we have to clean it good fi mek it send.”

The paper is then shipped in containers to a company in Guatemala which has the job of turning it into new paper products. Some of that trash paper, however, finds its way to the Caribbean Paper Company at mile thirteen on the Western Highway.

Adriana Uribe
“Caribbean Paper and Belize Recycling are sister companies, we work together. When we started the project as Belize Recycling, we were dependent on Caribbean Paper. They were the ones that patronised us, but now we are an independent company with the same owners.”

Raul Bonilla, G.M., Caribbean Paper Company
“We collect the recycled paper here in Belize and then it is sent to the conversion plants. Some are located in Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico.”

Machines at those plants then reduce the paper to pulp, and it is cleaned, kneaded, and bleached if necessary. The newly recycled tissue paper is then shipped back to Belize gigantic rolls.

Raul Bonilla
“We are sending three containers per week and we are bringing in maybe three or four containers with the bobbin for us.”

At the Caribbean Paper warehouse, the huge rolls are converted into smaller rolls of toilet paper, napkins, and paper towels which are marketed under the names Softy, Elite, and Class.

Raul Bonilla
“With the recycling paper it is very, very soft, safe, and clean, it’s a very good product.”

Kendra Griffith
“And it is the same quality as other papers?”

Raul Bonilla
“Yes, it’s the same quality.”

In November 2006, Maya Belize Recyclers was added to the corporate stable of owners Juan Carlos Dussan and Carlos Corzo.

Wilfredo Cocom, Manager, Maya Belize Recyclers
“Our business basically is in the collection of all scrap metals, being from iron all the way down to more valuable metals such as copper and bronze. Anything that has any metal components to it, we would be interested in collecting.”

The business operates from a three acre lot located at mile eight on the Western Highway, and like the paper products, these metals eventually find their way to Guatemala.

Wilfredo Cocom
“We are mostly into the iron, the heavy aspect of it. There are other collections agencies about in town who are on a more smaller scale which would purchase the lighter metals, but the heavier metals is where we come into play due to the machinery and everything required to do that work.”

“For export, we prepare them in forty foot flatbeds and those flatbeds are mixed with various types of metals. The flatbeds go with maybe eighty percent iron and the rest is maybe mixed with other metals such as aluminium and copper and bronze.”

Kendra Griffith
“How often do you all send out a shipment?”

Wilfredo Cocom
“Right now, once per week.”

Maya Belize Recyclers also removes old cars for free. So the next time you want to rid your home or business of large amounts of paper clutter or remove that metal eyesore from your yard, think recycling.

Adriana Uribe
“We pay four cents a pound for the paper and two cents for cardboards. Forty cents for aluminium, copper is two dollars, iron three cents, bronze sixty-cents, and stainless steel fifty cents.”

Wilfredo Cocom
“Everything that comes into Belize remains in Belize, whether it be a car, a tin can, it will remain here. We need to have a better awareness of recycling. We could start at school, we could start at home, we could start with our friends, churches. At the end of the day, it helps a lot with keeping us a lee bit more clean.”

Collectively, the three companies employ fifty-four persons. Kendra Griffith reporting for News Five.

Belize Recycling Company does not accept carbon, wet, dirty, or oily papers.