THE National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) will, within another week, form part of a pilot project to test used vegetable oil that has been converted into biodiesel in its garbage trucks.

It is the first Government entity to sign on to the project, which has been running for the last six months, following two years of research.

“We will be participating in the project, it is something that we will be doing but it (using of the bio-fuel) is really still in its infancy stages; we are still working out a few things,” said Joan Gordon-Webley, head of NSWMA.

Gordon-Webley declined to say how many trucks are to participate in the project, but according to State Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister Robert Montague, who has direct responsibility for local Government, five trucks of various ages have already been identified.

The project, which involves the use of a chemical process to convert used vegetable oil into biodiesel, was proposed to the Government by Richard Walker earlier this year through his new company Jamaica Bio-fuel, which carries a slug line “Think Outside the Barrel”.

But the venture had hit a minor snag, Montague explained. “Because we were contracting Jamaica Bio-fuel we had to go to the

NCC (National Contracts Commission). The NCC

does not have a category

for experimentation and therefore we had to go get that category inserted into the regulations and special exemptions from the Ministry of Mining and Energy. We are now ready to begin.”

Walker, also operator of the computer services company, Printware Jamaica Limited, said he has successfully reduced his organisation’s fuel costs over a two year-period by utilising the fuel he produced.

The idea for the project was one born of a trial

run at Walker’s parent company Printware.

“We decided to produce our own fuel so we could power our own vehicles and that is something that we did on a small scale just for immediate need,” said Walker. “However, the situation (with the national oil bill) wasn’t getting any better and we decided to take it another step and work with the relevant Government agencies and see how best we can save the environment, create jobs, save some foreign exchange and reduce the country’s dependency on foreign oil.”

And so they did.

“We have been having dialogue with the Government about the project, informing them that we have a process, we have been doing research for a number of years, we have been using our vehicles and we would like to see how we can move this thing forward in the nation’s interest,” he said.

Walker currently uses a series of chambers and cylinders to convert the fuel at his laboratory on Omara Road in Kingston. He said that funds to build and operate the machine came from his own pocket and from the private sector.

Walker noted that while the ministries of health and energy and mining have approved and offered encouragement for the project, more support is needed to make the venture

a success.

“There are a lot of challenges in the sense that because this is a new concept, a new idea, some of the framework for moving it forward did not exist. They (Government) like the idea, they welcomed the idea. But let’s face it, funds are just not available, especially to fund a concept, an idea that has never been tried here before; it is too risky.”

Still, the engineer is hopeful for a positive outcome. For one thing, he said several Jamaicans have been able to secure jobs.

“We have had fabricators who have had to fabricate the equipment, we have had persons to design the equipment, we have had electricians here to wire the place. There is a (set) of people, who, with the recession being what it is, have new job opportunities in areas that they wouldn’t normally have,” Walker said. “The other good thing is that we are using something that would normally go to waste — waste vegetable oil. We have managed to work along with a lot of these corporate Jamaicans who use a lot of this product and we are able to receive it from them and turn it into energy which is ten times more environmentally friendly, has better lubricating factors for your motor vehicle, and that will reduce foreign exchange.”

Ultimately, Walker wants to see the fuel distributed to players in the productive sector to help cut operational costs while trimming the island’s oil bill.

“I would like to see it, and this is subject to Government authorisation, distributed to the productive sector — people in the manufacturing sector who need that additional edge that our counterparts in other parts of the world have benefited from. I would like to see it used in our buses so we can bring down the cost to get to and from work,” he noted. “I don’t think that we will be able to produce enough any time soon to meet the demands for a wide-scale roll-out but certainly it being in the hands of the productive sector would help to stimulate the economy.”