By VERNON CLEMENT JONES, Guardian Business Editor

Bahamas Waste is now gearing up to collect, bale, then export hundreds of tons of waste cardboard — gathering from local businesses what they would otherwise have had to pay the local dump to take off their hands.

"We'd ultimately like to recycle it here in The Bahamas," Managing Director Francisco de Cardenas told Guardian Business Thursday. "But for now we are investing in a cardboard baler and working with our customers with the intention of then exporting it to the Far East or markets in the U.S.

"We hope that as the operation grows over the next couple years we will eventually improve revenue streams."

The operation, involving a $300k initial investment in the industrial baler now being assembled on the company's site, is aimed at diverting a material that comprises the single largest component clogging up dumps around the world.

That's regrettable, say recycling experts, pointing to cardboard's creme de la creme status in the paper world. Because of its long fibers and weigh, the stuff is considered the best of all papers for recycling and the transformation into any and everything from more cardboard to writing paper.

Historically, markets for recycled cardboard have been strong, and per-ton prices have been among the highest paid for all recycled papers. De Cardenas is already in talks with key buyers as well as shipping companies that travel in and out of Nassau Harbour. The latter of those trips usually involves a largely empty ship, given the dearth of Bahamian exports. Shipping cardboard out for Bahamas Waste would flesh out their revenue streams on the back-end.

Even with fuel prices hugging all-time highs, de Cardenas seems confident the business will eventually be profitable considering market prices and the minimal cost of procuring the cardboard in the first place.

He's depending on his customers, specifically the wholesales and other importers that now pay the dump $10 a ton to bury their empty boxes to allow him to take that material off their hands. It's the kind of largess that makes good business sense for those businesses increasingly looking to cull expenses in what many are now calling recessionary times. The garbage haul is, of course, also saving them the expense of carting the cardboard away.

Bahamas Waste is in fact counting on those customers to see it that way, although it's the country, more so than the company, that stands most to benefit from the operation.

Diverting waste from a bloated dump is increasingly important, say Bahamian environmentalists. They point to the obvious ecological benefits of that intervention.

De Cardenas seems to be largely motivated by the same kind of forward thinking considering the large start-up costs likely to balloon to $500k if he erects a building to house the baler.

Still, private waste management companies in this country are more and more being forced to find other ways of growing their businesses. The government, having earlier suggested it would farm out residential garbage collection to those private players, has now moved to hold onto that business. Even the largest of the Nassau companies, namely, Bahamas Waste, has had trouble breaking into other Bahamian markets, specifically Grand Bahamas, although de Cardenas remains hopeful of someday effecting entry even there.