St Petersburg, Florida -- With the disaster in the Gulf keeping everyone on edge looking for a solution, the answer might lay in material manufactured by a Columbian company with an office in Florida.
The company, Global Environmental Technology, has a product that is 100 percent organic and was invented in 1998 by its president, Carlos Forero. He won science competitions in Switzerland and Austria for the product, which encapsulates oil and cleans the material up.
You would think that with the disaster in the Gulf, and oil spilling out and heading to the beaches, the Coast Guard would be interested in the product. However, the company says all they are getting is red tape and getting nowhere.
Liz Cabot, Forero's sister, says the Coast Guard said come back when they got EPA approval.
When EPA reviewed the product and said it could be used, the company went back to the Coast Guard and Cabot says they were told they had to fill out paperwork. Cabot says they have been waiting and waiting for the paperwork to clear.
It doesn't sound to me like they're being ignored, really, just mired in bureaucracy, roughly akin to a logjam in molasses.
It sounds like a good product, and it seems like EPA moved to approve it for use fairly quickly. Once it clears the Coast Guard it remains to be seen how long it will take to get enough of it manufactured to deal with this massive quantity of oil.
Note to the Coast Guard and other hoops the product needs to jump through: The clock is ticking. Show a little sense of urgency and cut the red tape and get the product out in the Gulf and on the problem. See if it works. What have you got to lose? The coastline and jobs are already toast.
Or is the problem that Big Biz has yet to determine who is going to make money on it?
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