When Saint Lucian eco-entrepreneur Wayne Neale popped up on the Royal Family’s Instagram page earlier this month it was a surreal but proud moment. “There was a lot of excitement, I was getting messages from all over the world.”
Neale was pictured receiving the prestigious Commonwealth Secretary-General’s Innovation for Sustainable Development Award – handed to him by Prince Harry at a London garden party on June 14. Neale was the only Saint Lucian, and one of only two innovators in the Caribbean, honoured at the event.
Neale is the founder and Managing Director of Greening the Caribbean (GtC), Saint Lucia’s only waste management and recycling firm. GtC offers its clients consultancy, collection and recycling services – sorting through their waste to determine what should go to landfill and what can be recycled. Reusable material, such as e-waste, cans, bottles and newspapers, is processed at GtC’s Materials Recovery Centre and then exported off the island.
For Neale, this recent recognition by the Commonwealth is not just a validation of his business model, which has been met with scepticism from some quarters, but also a way of showing his five employees and his clients that their efforts are seen and celebrated. “The level of appreciation I have for my team and my clients, I cannot put into words,” he says, adding that Rubis St Lucia and JE Bergasse in particular have been very supportive of GtC’s efforts. “The clients are the environmental champions, they are the ones that make it happen. It is their material we are recycling.”
From Recycling to Royalty
GtC’s clients, workers, family and friends were all delighted to hear of Neale’s win, but the winner himself had mixed feelings on the day – as did his fellow honourees. “It was a unique experience. I was nervous. We were all nervous. None of us had any idea of the scale of what we’d won. We only found out when all these high-level people were emphasising the significance of it.”
The award winners were given a crash course in royal protocol before meeting and greeting Prince Harry who attended in his role as Commonwealth Youth Ambassador. “We had a very nice conversation,” says Neale who describes the sixth in line to the British throne as “a genuine, humble, easygoing guy” and adds: “He was very knowledgeable and connected with the work we are doing.”
Mingling with royalty and Commonwealth leaders may have been a once in a lifetime experience but Neale was equally happy to meet fellow innovators and hear their stories. “Each one of them was inspiring. All of us were amazed by each other. There are positive things happening in the Commonwealth, there are people solving problems that may be beyond the capacity of governments.”
The Commonwealth comprises 53 independent countries and a combined population of 2.4 billion people. The 15 trailblazers selected from these countries were all recognised for the impact of their innovations in achieving one or more of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs are wide-ranging, covering areas such as education, energy use, climate action, health, poverty and inequality.
Neale’s fellow winners were diverse but all shared a passion for innovative solutions. Other award recipients included Nitesh Kumar Jangir from India who co-founded a medical device company designed to prevent deaths in emergency and critical care, and Elizabeth Kperun from Nigeria who created mobile applications and video content to simplify learning for African children – educating them in their native languages. The other Caribbean winner was Christopher Nesbitt from Maya Mountain Research Farm in Belize who has pioneered a sustainable tropical agroforesty operation.
“It was a very electic range of winners, but what we had in common was the challenges we face in our home countries. The obstacles are the same whether you are in Samoa, India, Nigeria or Saint Lucia,” says Neale. “No-one starts big; everyone starts small. Nationally, we do not have the resources to support the types of businesses we have, and what we do typically falls out of the scope of what a commercial bank will fund.”
Winning the Commonwealth Award came at a good time for Neale and the GtC team. While the company enjoyed steady momentum in 2017-18, increasing exports by 100 per cent, it suffered a setback at the end of 2018 when its materials recycling facility was targeted by thieves. “We had the burglary and we were struggling. Then we got word that I won and the timing was right on point. With the challenge of trying to get back on our feet, it was an opportunity to remind us of the significance of what we are doing.”
GtC is hoping that international recognition and the GBP 2,000 prize money will help the company expand, doubling its workforce and output. At present GtC has nine clients and recovers more than 200,000 kilos from landfill in a single year, but the ultimate goal is to take on fifty clients by 2024. Neale is also keen to create more “green collar” jobs and make those jobs more valued, saying: “There is a stigma associated with dealing with waste. People may look down on us when we’re doing a garbage run but there’s more to it than they realise. We are not in the garbage business, or the scrap business; we are in the environmental business.”
And the environmental business is booming. GtC has a busy schedule this year with many projects in the pipeline including a French-funded initiative to transport plastic bottle waste from Saint Lucia to a recycling plant in Martinique; the ongoing sustainable lifestyle project at Marchand Combined School which is providing filtered water stations and reusable receptacles to students; and further work with Rubis and Massy Stores.
For Neale, it’s all part of a positive trend in the sector. “I see change. I see efforts to change. We still have such a long way to go but the bottom line is that there is movement.”
And this movement is set to accelerate across the Commonwealth. The Innovation for Sustainable Development Awards is in its inaugural year but Neale believes it will go from strength to strength saying: “It is not just an awards programme, it is a support system. It is not a one-off, it is a starting point. The Commonwealth leadership want to see it expand and continue to engage and identify more and more innovators. They want to see more success stories.”
As one of those success stories, Neale is happy to be feted but is keeping his eye on the bigger picture. “You do not do this work for recognition. You do it because it has to be done and no-one else is doing it.”
