Every Monday near my home in the Netherlands, the GFT container is collected. That is the bin for garden waste, food scraps and other organic material. On Fridays, it is the turn of the residual-waste container, and at least once a month paper is collected.
If I have additional waste, for example after cleaning out my storage room, I take it to the recycling center. There, separate containers are provided for wood, metal, plastic, electrical appliances and many other materials. You drive in and place each type of material in the designated container.
A few weeks ago, I went there again. By pure coincidence, the employee who helped me was a Curaçaoan. We talked for a while, and as I was separating my waste, my thoughts suddenly turned to Malpais.
Our landfill. Our mountain of waste.
And I thought: why couldn't we organize this on Curaçao as well, but in a much more systematic way?
Almost immediately, another, even more interesting question came to mind. We have always looked at what continues to be dumped at Malpais today. But what about everything that has already been thrown there over all these decades?
For almost a century, Curaçao has built and demolished homes, constructed and renovated roads, imported and discarded cars, replaced water pipes and electricity cables, and imported ever-growing quantities of consumer goods.
Part of all that eventually ended up in the same place.
Concrete, iron, copper, lead, cables, automobile parts, glass, asphalt, wood and, increasingly, plastic. Undoubtedly, there are also materials buried there that today we would rather not encounter, such as asbestos and other hazardous substances.
That means Malpais has become more than just a mountain of garbage. In a sense, it is also an accumulation of different decades of Curaçao's economic development. Some of what we imported, used, built, demolished and ultimately discarded is still stored there.
That brings me to another question: what if we stopped looking at Malpais solely as a landfill and started considering it as a potential reserve of raw materials?
Mining an old landfill
The idea is not as strange as it may initially sound.
Internationally, there is a concept known as "landfill mining": investigating old landfills to determine which materials can be recovered, which hazardous substances need to be removed or treated safely, and whether parts of the land can eventually be made useful again.
I am certainly not suggesting that Curaçao should send heavy machinery to Malpais tomorrow and start digging.
Quite the opposite.
The first step should be research.
A mining company does not start excavating simply because someone believes there may be copper underground. It first investigates what is there, where it is located, in what quantities, and whether extracting it is technically and economically feasible.
Why couldn't we approach Malpais in the same way?
And that investigation should go further than simply drilling a few holes.
We have something interesting at our disposal: our own economic history.
When were Curaçao's major neighborhoods constructed? Which materials were commonly used in construction? When were water pipes, electricity cables and telephone lines installed or replaced? When did the number of cars on Curaçao begin to increase significantly? When did plastic become dominant in packaging and household products? During which periods did Curaçao experience extensive construction and demolition?
Waste also tells a story.
If we know what Curaçao was importing, building, using and replacing during different periods, we may also gain a better understanding of what ended up in the different layers of Malpais.
Drilling and laboratory research could then determine whether those assumptions are correct.
Eventually, we could develop something resembling a "raw materials map" of Malpais: where significant quantities of metals and construction materials may be located, where plastics are concentrated, and where asbestos, lead or other hazardous substances may be present that require particularly careful handling.
Not everything is recyclable
There is an important distinction to make.
Not everything recovered from Malpais would automatically be recyclable. At the same time, not everything that is hazardous is necessarily without economic value.
Some metals can cause environmental damage when released without control, but can simultaneously have economic value when recovered and processed responsibly.
Other materials, such as asbestos, primarily represent a risk and require specialized treatment.
Concrete, asphalt and other mineral materials might potentially be reused as construction materials if research demonstrates that doing so is technically and environmentally responsible.
Plastic presents another challenge because older plastics may be mixed, contaminated or degraded.
The process should therefore be clear: first identify what is there, then separate and investigate it, recover whatever can safely and economically be reused, properly treat hazardous substances, and only return to permanent disposal what truly has no other viable application.
The land itself also has value
Even then, we would make a mistake if we calculated economic feasibility solely on the basis of how much money a kilogram of copper, a ton of steel or a quantity of recycled construction material could generate.
Curaçao is a small island, and land is scarce.
If materials can eventually be removed from parts of Malpais and the land can be safely rehabilitated, that land itself could regain economic or social value.
Future environmental costs could also potentially be avoided.
The real calculation therefore becomes much more interesting:
The value of recovered materials, plus the value of reclaimed land, plus avoided environmental damage, plus new economic activity and, finally, perhaps even the value of the knowledge Curaçao develops during the process.
And that is precisely where I see an opportunity that extends beyond Curaçao.
Curaçao could develop knowledge other islands need
In several recent articles, I have tried to look at our economy from the same strategic perspective: what opportunities do we already possess but no longer recognize because we have become accustomed to them?
With Aqualectra, I asked whether almost a century of experience producing drinking water from seawater represents something more than simply operating a public utility. That accumulated expertise could also have economic value outside Curaçao.
With Malpais, I am essentially asking the same question.
If Curaçao learns how a small island economy can investigate an old landfill, control hazardous substances, recover raw materials, rehabilitate land and simultaneously build a modern circular economy, we would be developing expertise in a problem that many other islands also face.
That takes me back to the waste containers near my home.
Obviously, it makes little sense to gradually remove old waste from Malpais while continuing to dump new material onto the same mountain.
The system for today's waste therefore needs to change at the same time.
Wherever possible, what we discard today should be separated today: metal with metal, wood with wood, construction material separately, glass separately, organic material separately, electronics separately and hazardous substances through a controlled process.
Exactly as I did a few weeks ago when I took the contents of my storage room to different containers.
Then two processes could take place side by side: gradually cleaning up what the past left behind while preventing ourselves from rebuilding the same mountain for future generations.
First investigate, then decide
After more than 22 years of teaching Business Administration, I have become increasingly convinced of a relatively simple strategic lesson.
An organization — and ultimately a country — should not only search for what it does not yet have. It must also learn to recognize what it has already accumulated throughout its development.
That is why I look at our experience with water. It is why I search for new economic activities that fit our geographical position, scale and expertise. And it is why I now look differently at the mountain where generations of Curaçaoans have taken their waste.
Perhaps serious research will show that recovering a large part of Malpais is economically unfeasible. If so, we must also have the courage to accept that conclusion.
But we can only know after investigating it.
My proposal, for now, is therefore surprisingly simple: don't start digging up Malpais yet.
First investigate it as if it were a mine.
Map what is inside. Determine what is hazardous. Investigate what can technically be recovered. Then calculate the total social and economic value.
Perhaps, in the end, we will discover mainly garbage.
But perhaps we will discover that, over almost a century, Curaçao has unknowingly accumulated a reserve of raw materials.
And perhaps that very mountain of waste will finally force us to think seriously about how we want to manage our raw materials over the next hundred years.
I believe that, at the very least, is worth investigating.
Orlando Meulens
Columnist