Caribbean Utilities Co. Ltd. (CUC), Grand Cayman, the public electric utility in the area, has announced a partnership with Cadwell Inc. for a recycling program helping CUC and residents.
“Through our partnership with Cadwell, we were able to clean up and export almost three football fields worth of recyclable materials weighing 1.1 million pounds which had been causing a bottleneck in our plant,” says Chad Powell, manager of materials management at CUC. “One key benefit to Grand Cayman is that a large amount of material will be kept out of the landfill. This helps to extend the life of the landfill while reducing the risk of pollution and fires.”
Some of the freed-up green space is now being dedicated to expanded training for the CUC’s workforce, which is important in the energy generation and transmission industry.
The long list of what was gathered, sorted, cleaned, transported and exported included electrical transformers, waste oil, rubber, copper, steel, brass, aluminum, streetlights, wire, wood and concrete.
“It has been a pleasure working with such a forward-thinking group of professionals who truly care about the environment,” says Joan Cadwell, co-founder and president of Pompano Beach, Florida-based Cadwell Inc. “We were pleased to work with CUC in Grand Cayman on this project. As a result of the partnership, CUC was able to create jobs by hiring local contractors, labor and hauling providers to accomplish what has taken a total of 7,100 man hours over the past six months.”
According to CUC, the company was the first in the Cayman Islands to become registered as an ISO 14001 business in 2004, as well as the newer ISO 14001:2015 standard, also earned by demonstrating CUC’s commitment to the standard's requirements and environmental policy.
Other efforts made by CUC to serve the community have included the expansion of its recycling program to accumulate smaller items such as aluminum cans, paper scrap and cardboard. The company plans to use its new industrial shredder to process an additional 500 pounds per quarter. CUC is also revising and updating procedures to minimize the amount of scrap that CUC sends to the landfill.
Cadwell says its company is focused on identifying the best recyclers in the United States and beyond to export the materials to help defray the cost of labor, transportation and container freight.
“In addition to being a distribution and recycling company, we have become logistics experts,” says Andrew Cadwell, CEO and co-founder of Cadwell.