The Cayman Islands Government has put out two tenders for contractors to haul away and recycle thousands of tonnes of waste tyres, scrap metal and end-of-life vehicles.
The Department of Environmental Health, which runs Cayman’s three landfills, posted both calls on 24 April.
Bids close through the Bonfire portal at 5pm local time on 15 May, with contracts set to be signed on 12 June.
The first tender covers about 5,485 US short tons of stockpiled tyres on Grand Cayman, 200 tons on Cayman Brac and 42 tons on Little Cayman.
Officials flagged that the landfills have no on-island disposal or recycling capacity, that storage space is running thin, and that whole tyres raise the risk and impact of landfill fires.
The chosen contractor will have to ship the tyres abroad for recycling at a licensed facility, with stock from Cayman Brac and Little Cayman moved before Grand Cayman’s.
The job must wrap up by 11 December, and the pricing form pegs the haul at 5,195 metric tonnes once it reaches the recycling site.
The second tender targets scrap metal and end-of-life vehicles, or ELVs, on the Sister Islands.
Cayman Brac is estimated to hold 1,600 tonnes of scrap metal – including 300 ELVs and 50 metal bales – alongside 300 tonnes of other waste for 1,900 tonnes in total.
Meanwhile, Little Cayman accounts for 450 tonnes of scrap metal, 100 ELVs and 200 tonnes of other waste, totalling 650 tonnes.
Officials warned that scrap metal and ELVs cannot go into landfills because they form subsurface voids that can trigger sinkholes and pose a fire hazard.
Bidders will need to carry out full ELV depollution – draining fuel, engine oil, gearbox oil, hydraulic fluids, coolants, antifreeze and brake fluids, pulling out batteries and tyres, and deploying any in-situ airbags – with works due by 11 October.
They must also carry CI$2 million in employer’s liability and third-party liability cover for each contract.
The tyre tender is at least the third crack at clearing the Grand Cayman pile.
Island Recycling Ltd, teamed up with UK-based GRG, signed a deal in 2016 to shred the George Town stockpile into tyre-derived aggregate for on-island construction fill over about 11 months.
Mosquito-borne diseases tied to stockpiled tyres – Zika, dengue and chikungunya among them – were highlighted as potential health risks.
The scrap metal tender, in turn, traces back to the unwinding of the failed Integrated Solid Waste Management System.
The public-private deal led by Dart Enterprises through ReGen Cayman would have closed Mount Trashmore, built a waste-to-energy plant and folded in ELV and scrap metal recycling.
The government tore up that 25-year contract in 2024.
The unwinding cost the public purse a $17.7 million settlement to the developers and left the Department of Environmental Health without a long-term recycling partner for ELVs and metals.
Health and environment minister Katherine Ebanks-Wilks told Finance Committee in November 2025 that, without an interim plan, the territory had roughly five to seven years before hitting landfill capacity.
