Seychelles to introduce waste sorting in households

A pile of Compressed plastic bottles pictured at the Cycléa company in Reunion island. (Rassin Vannier, Seychelles News Agency)

(Seychelles News Agency) - Seychelles is going one step further in managing waste now that a district in the west of the main island, Mahé, has been chosen for a pilot project to introduce the sorting of household garbage.

If proved successful in Grand Anse Mahé, the project will be extended to the other 25 districts of the 115-island archipelago in the western Indian Ocean with a population of 93, 000.

A team from Cycléa, a Reunion-based company, is expected in Seychelles in March. Cycléa, which manages the collection and sorting of waste in the west of the French overseas department in the Indian Ocean, will guide the Seychelles authorities on how to go about implementing the project.

This exchange has been made possible thanks to the framework of a decentralized cooperation agreement between the City of Victoria, in association with the Grand Anse district in Seychelles and Possession in Reunion, since October 2014.

The project was also selected by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs to be part of a programme to tackle climate change at the Paris environmental conference, COP21.

A Seychellois delegation led by the Mayor of Victoria, Jacqueline Moustache Belle, was in Reunion earlier this month to meet with officials of Cycléa.

The Seychelles delegation on their recent trip to Cycléa in Reunion. (Rassin Vannier, Seychelles News Agency) Photo License: CC-BY

The Chief Executive of Landscape and Waste Management Agency, Lena Desaubin, who also made the trip explained that Seychelles has been sorting out waste for several years, especially when it comes to metals and plastic bottles. The practice, however, had not been extended to include households.

"We went there to see how people in Reunion are sorting out their waste and see how this can be replicated in Seychelles,” Desaubin told SNA.

According to the Landscape and Waste Management Agency, a state company managing the collection of waste on the main inhabited islands of the archipelago, last year a total of 70,000 tonnes of waste were deposited at the main landfill at Providence, on the outskirts of the Capital Victoria on mainland, Mahé.

This represents 80 percent of the total amount of waste produced by the Seychellois population. The remaining 20 percent being plastic bottles and scrap metal, are recycled.

"We are also interested in exploring the possibility of exporting cartons but we do not have enough volume and maybe together with Reunion and the other islands in the region we can have a bigger volume," said Lena Desaubin.

The neighbouring Indian Ocean island of Reunion has years of experience in recycling.

Each household has two bins, one for non-recyclables and the other for waste that can be recycled.