Jamaican firms team up to form Recycle Now Jamaica

BY SHAMILLE SCOTT

Friday, February 14, 2014    

SEVEN local private companies have teamed up to pump $23.75 million, over three years, into a new national recycling initiative, Recycle Now Jamaica — a public/private partnership with the Government.

The Government will invest $50 million each year from cash taken from collection from the environmental levy, making the total investment for the initiative over three years, $200 million.

Recycling Partners of Jamaica, a non-profit organsiation formed under the initiative, will employ at least 300 workers under the Jamaica Emergency Employment Programme (JEEP). The company will be self-sufficient from the sale of baled plastic that is to be exported to China and the US.

Recycle Now Jamaica aims to recover 15 per cent of the island’s recyclable plastic bottles within a year.

By year three of its operations, it projects to reclaimed 35 per cent of PET (clear plastic) bottles, which amounts to about a third of the recyclables on the island.

Still, about two-thirds of the bottles will be left for private players to make money from.

“It is useful to present some statistics to indicate that there will be no crowding out of the existing operators,” said Omar Davies, minister of transport, works and housing at the launch on Wednesday at the Knutsford Court Hotel.

Wisynco chairman, William Mahfood, said that his company, along with other manufacturers such as Pepsi- Cola Jamaica, GraceKennedy Foods and Services, Jamaica Beverages, Lasco, Trade Wind Citrus, and Seprod, partnered with the Government to develop and support a long-term solution to plastic waste in Jamaica. And by the end of May more companies are expected to come on board.

“We believe that it is in the nation’s best interest to volunteer our financial support to an initiative that has the potenial to make a difference in the environment and to the earning potential of those in the society that need it most,” said Mahfood.

Funds from the partnership will be used to establish satellite depots in strategic locations across the island on property provided by the Government to facilitate collection by JEEP participants. At the depots, collectors will be paid for the PET waste, and the clear plastic bottles will be

baled and taken

to a consolidation and logistics hub in Kingston and exported.

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Jamaican firms team up to form Recycle Now Jamaica

Firms "have duty" to hire locals

26 July 2013 Last updated at 13:03 ET Mr Hancock said he was calling for a change in culture not the law Companies have a “social duty” to hire local workers before recruiting abroad, a Conservative minister has said.

Matthew Hancock said firms should consider recruiting locally over “the easy option” of hiring from abroad.

But JD Wetherspoon chairman Tim Martin said the remarks were “irresponsible” as firms were not legally allowed to discriminate in favour of UK workers.

The government said Mr Hancock was just encouraging employers to invest time and money in training.

Mr Hancock, who is in charge of skills policy at the Department for Business, said that while British firms were not legally obliged to prioritise local workers, he believed they had a responsibility to support local employment.

‘More motivated’

He told BBC Radio 4 that foreign recruitment had been too high during the “boom years” under the last Labour government and, as the economy started to recover, firms should be prepared to spend more to train local staff.

“The responsibility of employers is to the communities they live in as well as to making a pure profit,” he said. “This is about a change of culture. I am arguing that it is companies’ social responsibility, their social duty, to look at employing locally first.”

He added: “Those who put the effort in have ended up with a more motivated employee, who is more connected to their company.”

Former prime minister Gordon Brown told the Labour Party conference in 2007 that the government would be “drawing on the talents of all to create British jobs for British workers”.

At the time, he was criticised by the Conservatives and others for cheap populism and pledging something that was undeliverable, because of free movement of labour within the European Union.

‘Silly thing’

Mr Hancock denied he was saying the same thing now, insisting he was calling for a change in corporate culture rather than a change in the law and his focus was on bigger firms with the capacity to invest in training.

Asked whether “local workers” meant British workers, he said: “It is a matter of making sure that people who are here get given the chance… I am talking about local young unemployed people, certainly who live locally, people who are unemployed here.”

He added: “How many people go to their local job centre where there are people searching for work and ask them to supply candidates before taking someone and bringing them in from abroad?”

Tim Martin, chairman of pub firm JD Wetherspoon, told BBC Radio 5Live that firms would be “in terrible trouble” legally were they to discriminate in favour of British workers: “I think it’s irresponsible, really. The government has now realised that people feel that immigration’s been very high for a number of years and is trying to pass it off onto business to do something about it.”

He said the remarks also risked “division in the workplace”, adding: “It’s a silly thing to say.”

A spokesman for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said: “Matthew Hancock is not encouraging illegal behaviour. The minister is encouraging employers to invest time and money in training – which the government is also doing.”

Figures published earlier this month showed a further 57,000 fall in total unemployment but long-term joblessness continues to rise while nearly a million 18-24 year olds are still out of work.

Ministers say more than 520,000 people started an apprenticeship last year and they are launching traineeship programmes to help 16-24 year olds prepare for work.

UKIP leader Nigel Farage told the BBC: “Mr Hancock’s comments are totally, utterly meaningless rubbish, while we remain part of the EU’s single market.”

He added: “They (the Conservatives) know they have lost the argument on jobs and immigration and UKIP have stolen a march on them and are attempting, through rhetoric, to take that territory back.”

View the original article here

Firms "have duty" to hire locals

Firms "have duty" to hire locals

26 July 2013 Last updated at 13:03 ET Mr Hancock said he was calling for a change in culture not the law Companies have a “social duty” to hire local workers before recruiting abroad, a Conservative minister has said.

Matthew Hancock said firms should consider recruiting locally over “the easy option” of hiring from abroad.

But JD Wetherspoon chairman Tim Martin said the remarks were “irresponsible” as firms were not legally allowed to discriminate in favour of UK workers.

The government said Mr Hancock was just encouraging employers to invest time and money in training.

Mr Hancock, who is in charge of skills policy at the Department for Business, said that while British firms were not legally obliged to prioritise local workers, he believed they had a responsibility to support local employment.

‘More motivated’

He told BBC Radio 4 that foreign recruitment had been too high during the “boom years” under the last Labour government and, as the economy started to recover, firms should be prepared to spend more to train local staff.

“The responsibility of employers is to the communities they live in as well as to making a pure profit,” he said. “This is about a change of culture. I am arguing that it is companies’ social responsibility, their social duty, to look at employing locally first.”

He added: “Those who put the effort in have ended up with a more motivated employee, who is more connected to their company.”

Former prime minister Gordon Brown told the Labour Party conference in 2007 that the government would be “drawing on the talents of all to create British jobs for British workers”.

At the time, he was criticised by the Conservatives and others for cheap populism and pledging something that was undeliverable, because of free movement of labour within the European Union.

‘Silly thing’

Mr Hancock denied he was saying the same thing now, insisting he was calling for a change in corporate culture rather than a change in the law and his focus was on bigger firms with the capacity to invest in training.

Asked whether “local workers” meant British workers, he said: “It is a matter of making sure that people who are here get given the chance… I am talking about local young unemployed people, certainly who live locally, people who are unemployed here.”

He added: “How many people go to their local job centre where there are people searching for work and ask them to supply candidates before taking someone and bringing them in from abroad?”

Tim Martin, chairman of pub firm JD Wetherspoon, told BBC Radio 5Live that firms would be “in terrible trouble” legally were they to discriminate in favour of British workers: “I think it’s irresponsible, really. The government has now realised that people feel that immigration’s been very high for a number of years and is trying to pass it off onto business to do something about it.”

He said the remarks also risked “division in the workplace”, adding: “It’s a silly thing to say.”

A spokesman for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said: “Matthew Hancock is not encouraging illegal behaviour. The minister is encouraging employers to invest time and money in training – which the government is also doing.”

Figures published earlier this month showed a further 57,000 fall in total unemployment but long-term joblessness continues to rise while nearly a million 18-24 year olds are still out of work.

Ministers say more than 520,000 people started an apprenticeship last year and they are launching traineeship programmes to help 16-24 year olds prepare for work.

UKIP leader Nigel Farage told the BBC: “Mr Hancock’s comments are totally, utterly meaningless rubbish, while we remain part of the EU’s single market.”

He added: “They (the Conservatives) know they have lost the argument on jobs and immigration and UKIP have stolen a march on them and are attempting, through rhetoric, to take that territory back.”

View the original article here

Firms "have duty" to hire locals

Tech firms to make Blu-ray successor

29 July 2013 Last updated at 15:09 ET Falling Blu-ray film prices have been unable to prevent a fall in demand for disc-based movies Sony and Panasonic have announced plans for a successor to Blu-ray discs.

The firms say they want to develop an optical disc capable of holding at least 300 gigabytes of data by the end of 2015.

By contrast, normal dual-layer Blu-rays can only hold up to 50GB.

Sony has previously said that 4K ultra-high-definition movies – which offer four times the resolution of 1080p video – were likely to take up more than 100GB of space.

It recently launched a device that allows 4K films to be streamed over the internet, but that will be impractical for people with slow internet access or accounts with data-use limits.

4k camcorders

The tech firms do not directly refer to 4K movie sales in their press release, but rather talk of the wider “archive market”.

“Optical discs have excellent properties to protect them against the environment, such as dust resistance and water resistance, and can also withstand changes in temperature and humidity when stored,” they say.

“They also allow inter-generational compatibility between different formats, ensuring that data can continue to be read even as formats evolve. This makes them a robust medium for long-term storage of content.”

GoPro already makes a consumer-targeted camera capable of recording in the 4K video format

Although the firms indicate the primary target market for the new technology will be businesses wishing to copy and preserve their data, there is also likely to be demand from the consumer market for higher capacity discs, even if sales of existing formats are waning.

The rise of streaming services such as Amazon’s Lovefilm, Tesco’s Blinkbox and Netflix coupled with the problem of internet piracy have eaten into disc-based television box set and movie sales.

There were 179 million disc-based videos sold in the UK last year, according to recently published figures from the British Film Institute (BFI). That marked a 14% drop on 2011.

They still accounted for more than £1.5bn of sales – more than six times the £243m generated by video-on-demand services over the same period. But VoD sales were 50% up on the year.

“For the foreseeable future, even with more advances in streaming, there will be a niche for discs,” Russ Crupnick, a media analyst at consultants NPD told the BBC.

“But how large that is going to be is hard to say because it is going to be more about the collector and less about every day usage.”

The demand for extra storage is also likely to be fuelled by the public’s ability to generate its own ultra-high-definition footage.

JVC, Sony and Panasonic have all shown off prototype camcorders which they say will be targeted at the “prosumer” market, while GoPro already offers a budget option, albeit one that only records the format at 15 frames per second.

Panasonic already makes a 100GB Blu-ray disc, but it needs a special player

“The cheapest way to store lots of this material long term is going to be on an optical disc rather than a solid state drive in your laptop or tablet, or on SD cards,” said Paul O’Donovan, digital video expert at the tech advisory firm Gartner.

“And they are more convenient if you want to send the video you shot to somebody.

“Imagine trying to send a 300 gigabyte file over the internet – it would take ages.”

Special triple-layer 100GB BDXL Blu-ray discs already exist, offering an interim solution, and quad-level 128GB versions have also been promised. However, neither can be read by a normal player.

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Tech firms to make Blu-ray successor