And in addition to other environmental matters, it's hard to ignore the garbage piling up outside of Belmopan at their transfer station on the Hummingbird Highway. It's a terrible eyesore and we also asked the minister about this today and he explained that the problem dates back to when the transfer stations were first developed and implemented but are now unable to take on the amount of garbage being produced.
Orlando Habet, Minister of Sustainable Development
"We've been having some problems really countrywide in all the transfer stations. I think that part of the problem is that as Belize becomes more affluent people consume more. And not only can we consume more from what we buy locally but people have access to Amazon products and all these trucks that come in from the US and bring in products so there is a lot more waste, so there is a lot more disposal. The contracts that were given out maybe three or four years ago may not be sufficient to be able to pull out all the garbage from the transfer stations. Another problem that exists is I think the original concept was mistaken and was not done properly. One the transfer stations were put right beside the roadside where it should have been put a quarter mile in so even if you had some problems it wouldn't be visible to the public. The transfer station itself had some ramps itself where some trucks that are loaded, for example that in Dangriga, the trucks cannot go up because it is too steep and the weight, it can't go up so they dump outside. The other thing is that the new way of doing transfer of solid waste to the National landfills is not to put it in a transfer station it's the truck that gets it and compacts it and rolls it in a bale and puts in in a truck that will transfer it to the landfill so you don't have to put it in a transfer station so that is a problem. And also the contractors sometimes the contractors don't have the capacity or atleast when they put in their bids they show that they have but sometimes along the way they clearly done have the capacity of moving the garbage as the way the contract states for them to clean up all that is going on so what you see in these transfer station is many times what they are doing is moving the new one by the old one still stays there so there is a capacity problem."
