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An intensive 2 day workshop called Zero Waste 2025: Reduce. Replace. Revolutionize  is underway (February 15-16, 2018) with the Zero Waste Antigua Barbuda Group, a cross section of civil society, Government agencies, and NGOs that discussed emerging waste technologies and policies to approach Zero Waste by 2025:

• Smarter collection processes, enabled by radio frequency identification (RFID) tags

• Advanced processing techniques for recovering materials of value. extracting gold, silver, copper from computer waste

• Waste-to-energy, waste-to-fuel and landfill gas recovery options.

• Improved disposal methods, such as "sanitary landfilling," bioreactor landfills

The goal was to plan out a Zero Waste Strategy that lays the groundwork to:

• Establish convenient source separation programs

• Provide generator and service provider incentives

• Conduct extensive outreach

• Adopt policies and enforce

• Develop advanced processing and new markets.

Success stories in the Caribbean include:

1. Grenada – OAS project on Fish Waste to Poultry Feed.

2. Falmouth, Jamaica – Vegetable market recycle and composting – purchase carts and brooms to clean up organic waste and compost.

3. Plastic and bottle deposit-refund – Reduce plastic bottle use.  Barbados is evaluating legislation to improve policies and incentives.

4. Caribbean Waste Collective – Analysis to address economies-of-scale and co-manage Caribbean wide recycle, reduce and retrofit. 

5. Antigua & Barbuda, Aruba, Dominica and Trinidad plastic bag ban - Antigua & Barbuda, Aruba and Dominica have successfully secured the support of a plastic bag ban amongst retailers.

6. Saint Lucia and Grenada used oil-to-energy - Countries in the region constantly receive unsolicited proposals for Waste 2 Energy technologies that can convert all of their waste to electricity, eliminate the need for landfills.

Successful policy initiatives and market based instruments include:

• Deposit Refund and Monthly User Fees – Deposit refund for bottles and plastics. Grenada and Nevis have established a mechanism were solid waste management is treated like a utility where customers pay a monthly fee for service.

• Facility Tipping Fees – Islands such as Belize, Aruba and Barbados are charging commercial customers fees to use transfer stations and landfills.

• Tax Credits and Deductions - Tax incentives to make alternatives to Styrofoam cost equivalent or promote duty free import of waste-to-energy technology, biogas, or solar panels and solar hot water heaters. 

• Environmental Levies - Numerous islands in the region of both a value added tax (VAT) and assess an environmental levy on products entering the country. Nevis applies a 1% environmental tax.

• Private sector involvement in waste management: The city of Guayaquil (Ecuador) has granted Canadian firms rights for the collection of solid waste. Private garbage collection funded through monthly fee paid by households. Fee amounts to 10% of each household's electricity bill. Private firms paid per ton of collected garbage. Payment method promotes further waste collection and management innovation.

• Sale of rights for waste disposal. Price based on volume of generated waste rather than uniform tariffs in Bolivia, Venezuela, Jamaica and Barbados.

• "Cooperativa" program (Brazil): the emergence of voluntary associations of private individuals engaged in waste collection and recycling has lessened the need for institutional frameworks for waste collection.