What if we shifted our focus from the sugar product to bagasse?

Dear Editor, What if..? What if, before dismantling the sugar industry, we shifted our focus from the (traditional) sugar product to bagasse? In other words, what if we started to think about the ‘waste’ material as a manufacturing product? One tonne of refined sugar results in about two tonnes of bagasse so we produce quite a lot without realising it. Has anyone looked seriously at the range of products now made from bagasse and how these might be converted into additional revenue streams locally? Here are a few: 1. denim jeans made from cane fibre by a Japanese company, Sugar Cane & Co. (The fashion industry, it should be mentioned, is worth US$ 2.4 trillion worldwide and shows little sign of declining).

2. Bio-Based Xorel, a versatile textile developed by an American company, Carnegie, is used in highend interior decoration projects. 6085 of the product is made from bagasse.

3. biodegradable packaging for cooked food is being made by a company called ‘Vegware’ with outlets in the USA, UK and Australia. We already have some local expertise in packaging products: perhaps this might be a profitable sideline at least?

4. paper can be made from bagasse and, by some estimates, already accounts for about 10% of world bagasse production.

5. briquettes made from bagasse ash have been trialled by the Finnish government in the Kenyan sugar belt.

6. Indian scientists have experimented on using bagasse as a

substitute medium for growing fungal cultures.

7. Late last year, work at the National Centre for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology at the University of Madras (Chennai) was reported to have “developed a simple, low-cost and efficient method for green synthesis of fluorescent carbon quantum dots from sugarcane bagasse” in a study published in Applied Surface Science. Carbon quantum dots emit light and are non-toxic. They can serve as biosensors, in light-emitting diodes and even to deliver drugs around the human body. For example, researchers have injected liquids containing carbon quantum dots into a living body to image it from the inside.

In addition to this, joint ventures such as Amyris (a Californian bio-tech with links to Brazil) have long been working to produce biohydrocarbons and biochemicals derived from sugar cane such as diesel and jet fuel. Amyris is, in fact, engaged in a partnership with Total to produce renewable jet fuel. Even the press mud or filter cake is being developed as a source of organic fertiliser in universities in India.

There is talk in Guyana at present of developing a green economy. It sounds, to the unpoliticised, like a reworking of the previous administration’s LCDS. An ‘inclusive green economy,’ according to a recent UN publication “is low carbon, efficient and clean in production, but also inclusive in consumption and outcomes, based on sharing, circularity, collaboration, solidarity, resilience, opportunity, and interdependence. It is focused on expanding options and choices for national economies, using targeted and appropriate fiscal and social protection policies, and backed up by strong institutions that are specifically geared to safeguarding social and ecological floors. And it recognizes that there are many and diverse pathways to environmental sustainability.’

Sugar is a crop, the ultimate renewable resource. We cannot dismantle sugar without exploring all alternatives and without a careful plan in place for the thousands who will lose their livelihoods. Yours faithfully, Isabelle de Caires