Dubai: The UAE has experienced a rapid economic and population boom in the last few decades.
Unfortunately, the country’s rate of waste generation has also kept pace.
The small country has a huge environmental footprint, with UAE residents ranking among the world’s most wasteful.
In Dubai, where 2.2 million people live, the daily garbage output is estimated to be around 2.3kg per person on average. The capital Abu Dhabi has a similar rate too, according to various estimates.
That is almost double the rate in the Indian city of Chennai — home to four times as many people. It is also almost twice the UK rate.
Landfills are filling up fast, even though a staggering 60 per cent of what lies there could, under ideal conditions, be recycled, according to a senior waste management official.
The situation has not gone unnoticed by authorities, who are trying to turn the tide on waste. Key to the solution is recycling, but officials stress it is a “shared responsibility” between residents, businesses, waste management companies and regulators.
Gulf News spoke with senior UAE officials, residents and stakeholders in the recycling sector to explore what strategies and action plans can make the country greener and less wasteful.
A “zero-landfill” campaign is being aggressively pursued, by building recycling capacity, encouraging residents to recycle and chalking out a comprehensive waste management programme. Authorities are also looking into the potential of waste-to-energy (WTE) projects, such as a plan to develop the world’s largest WTE gasification plant in Sharjah.
Dubai, meanwhile, should have two more recycling plants in operation next year if plans progress on schedule. Even Abu Dhabi, which has enormous crude oil reserves, plans to produce biodiesel from waste cooking oil and energy from landfill gases.
Across the country, at the federal level and at the emirate level, the approach to waste is shifting. Waste is not just being seen as waste, but as an opportunity to develop industry sustainably, shrinking the footprint along the way.
