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Plan to recycle 40% of waste in Sharjah landfills

SHARJAH — Bee’ah, an environmental and waste management organisation based in Sharjah, has set a goal to churn out 40 per cent of disposed waste from landfills in the UAE into reusable materials as the need for landfill management has become a growing concern, according to James McGuire, Bee’ah’s Senior Vice-President of Operations.

“The key to a solution is the way landfills are managed in the country. If the infrastructure is made stronger and people take the initiative to recycle, we can recover a lot more materials than usual. As landfills can contain potentially hazardous waste such as mixed solid waste (MSW) and liquid waste, it (the waste) needs to be controlled in a way to protect the environment and society. Our target is to divert 40 per cent of all wastes into recycling,” he said, adding that around 60 per cent of the waste comes from construction, industrial and demolition sites.

The importance of managing the resting grounds of trash is followed by concerns of decreasing space for waste. “We are already dealing with space issues in the emirates. People think that the UAE has a lot of space but that’s not true. Reality is that the emirates has been expanding for the past 10 to 15 years and as this expansion continues and population grows, the amount of area for landfills will decrease. Landfill diversion, thus, becomes a point on everyone’s agenda. A lot of dump sites are uncontrolled and this has huge impacts on the environment,” he said.

He further explained that there are two types of landfills present in the UAE —‘engineered landfills’, where trash material is sorted beforehand, and ‘dump sites’, where waste is simply dumped all together at a designated area. “There are more dump sites here and it is critical in this region that landfills become ‘engineered’ to reduce their sizes,” he said.

Bee’ah and the Sharjah Municipality recently announced signing of a 20-year agreement where Bee’ah will take care of landfill site operations across the emirate. Under this agreement, Bee’ah will also introduce further recycling initiatives while encouraging international standards of waste source separation and recycling practices.

“Sharjah had a major waste problem compared to the rest of the emirates so there was a need to come in and tackle the issue. We need to incorporate an inexpensive way to reuse and reduce the amount that is thrown out so we can close the recycling loop. We are looking to develop the local capacity of landfills and promote sustainable development of the economy and environmental education, not just in Sharjah but also beyond the emirate’s borders,” said Jeremy Byatt, Bee’ah’s Vice-President for Environment.

The organisation is also planning to launch a Residential Recycling Programme this year and aims to distribute green and blue bins in homes across Sharjah.

The purchase of new equipment is on the list to transport the recyclables collected from these bins for 
disposal.—

Recycling Facilities

Bee’ah’s Waste Management Complex (WMC) in Al Saj’ah consists of sub-units where the three R’s — reduce, reuse and recycle — operate the facility.

· About 1,200 tons of waste was processed on a daily basis at the Material Recovery Facility (MRF) during the third quarter of 2010 where mixed solid waste and sorted recyclable material in different streams like paper, cardboard, plastic and glass are recovered for re-use.

The MRF is the largest facility of its kind in the Middle East and among the largest in the world.

· More than 6,000 tons of construction waste including concrete, bricks, wood and asphalt is being processed daily at the Demolition Waste Recycling Facility (CDW) where most of the waste is broken down and processed for re-use on roads, pavements and walkways.

· The Tyre Recycling Facility (TRF), a first of its kind in the region, recycles about 4,000 tyres arriving at Sharjah’s landfills daily. It was one of the few facilities in the world using a 100 per cent environment-friendly cryogenics process to turn old tyres into crumb rubber which is used for flooring products. It also produces asphalt rubber used in many countries to build roads.

farhana@khaleejtimes.com