The Boys and Girls Clubs of the Virgin Islands’ St. Croix recycling center in Anna’s Hope will be reopening soon and taking aluminum and steel cans, thanks to a grant from the V.I. Waste Management Authority (WMA).
Wanting to divert as much recyclable material as possible away from the territory’s landfills, the WMA awarded $39,000 to the Boys and Girls Club to refurbish the facility and begin taking in cans.
The center closed down a little over a year ago, when the previous company contracted to process and haul the metal off-island left. Since then, the site has sat unused.
But the clubs partnered with the St. Croix Recycling Association; WMA then reviewed the application and proposal and approved the grant, which WMA officials say is the first of a series of projects to progressively expand recycling.
The grant funds and money from corporate and private sponsors will be used to purchase a state-of-the-art "densifier" that packs cans down to 1/50th their original size, as well as a magnetic sorter, signs, and other equipment. With grant in hand, the Boys and Girls Club just signed a new lease on the site with the V.I. government, which owns the land, and will take possession and begin work on Dec. 1. They hope to have the center up and running again by February.
The V.I. Recycling Company is the newly appointed operator for the Recycling Center. The company is a fully licensed and insured local contractor that provides scrap metal, equipment, and other recycling services for government, public, private, and nonprofit organizations in the territory. They currently process scrap metal for Hovensa and have the capacity to process as much as the center can deliver—and get good rates by shipping in bulk, said Colleen Sullivan of the St. Croix chapter of the Recycling Association of the Virgin Islands (RAVI), at a check presentation ceremony Monday.
The new center will include on-site bins for public drop-off of aluminum cans, steel cans, aluminum scrap and steel scrap materials. RAVI volunteers are working with the Boys and Girls Club to supply the center by devising plans for additional public drop-off sites throughout the island.
St. Croix brings in 27 million cans a year, according to numbers provided by the island’s major distributors, said Emily Graci of the Boys and Girls Club of St. Croix. Graci and Sullivan said they’ve set a goal of diverting at least 5 million of those cans from the waste stream.
WMA Executive Director May Adams Cornwall said this was the start of a steady growth in recycling that would intensify as plans to close the territory’s landfills and divert trash to a planned waste-to-energy trash- and petroleum coke-fired power plant.
Mario Leonard, director of Environmental Programs for WMA, said there used to be recycling contests every year in the schools, with prizes going to the biggest collectors, and he would be pursuing programs like that as a way of getting as much of the community as possible involved in the recycling effort.
For now, St. Croix will only be collecting aluminum and steel cans. But the variety of materials will be expanded over time, WMA officials said.
"In the very near future, we will be doing glass, aluminum, nonferrous metals and plastics," said Charmin Springer, recycling coordinator for the WMA.
Just down the road at the Peter’s Rest collection center, the WMA will have recycling bins once work on a storage facility there is complete, she said.
Cornwall said businesses, churches, community groups and private individuals all have a part to play and can help by organizing regular collection drives and pick-up schedules.
To get involved, you can email Sullivan, the RAVI project manager, at stxra@usvircd.org, or call the Boys and Girls Club of St. Croix at 340-778-8990.
The WMA has more grants available for organizations with viable recycling projects, too. You can call Springer at 340-712-4961 for more information.
