Ambergris Caye Belize Resort Development - Department of ...

7.0 SOLID WASTE
7.1 Solid Waste Categories
Chapter 7
An essential component in the management of solid waste is that a proper procedure be
devised to sort and categorize these waste. In sorting solid waste the development
intends to create a differential system, assigning each class of solid waste to a different
treatment category. The four broad categories of solid waste are:
1. Construction and Field Waste (Waste category 1)
2. Household and Kitchen Waste (Waste category 2)
3. Industrial Waste (Waste category 3)
4. Toxic Waste (Waste category 4)
7.2 Projected Solid Waste Production and Waste Category Profile
ABR is a proposed transit to residential site with an important tourism component. The
proposed undertaking will result in increased population growth over the years, increased
visitation to the site, and an increase in the temporary and full time labor force. This
increase in population will result in an increase of solid waste production. Although full
occupancy is difficult to achieve at any given time, it is recommended that solid waste
management needs to be put in place for maximum occupancy at the project site.
It is hard to project how much waste will be produced by each visitor and staff at the
resort, however the development will have the means and capacity to house up to 578
guest at full capacity (between the hotels , condos and villas) who will be served by a
complement of staff equivalent to 0.5 staff per guest or 289 persons at full capacity.
Although its difficult to predict, its suffice to say that upper scale tourists resorts consume
far more processed goods, cleaning products and disposable goods (Conservation
International, 1999) than the local population or staff who will be producing nearer to the
Belizean average.
The Belize Solid Waste Management Project [Stantec 1999] estimates that the average
person in San Pedro was producing about 4.8 lbs of solid waste per day as per Table 7.2.
This was well above the amounts being produced in inland locations like Belize City (3.4
lbs/capita/day) and Orange Walk Town (2.8 lbs/capita/day). It is expected that the
average high roller at ABR will be producing at least as much solid waste per day as the
average San Pedrano. Likewise, the staff and office workers would be producing a little
less than the average. The profile of the average householder as an
investor/retiree/vacationer with higher income levels tend to fit these profiles especially
in the case of the higher end condos and villas to the north of the property.
On the assumption that these extrapolated figures will hold for the ABR resort, then one
arrives at the following figures for domestic waste production at the resort recalling the
7-1