DUBAI, 11th April, 2017 (WAM) -- Eng. Hussain Nasser Lootah, Director-General of the Dubai Municipality, said that the municipality is currently studying offers to generate energy from organic waste, as well as producing compost from the waste.
"We have completed the preparation of a comprehensive plan to deal with waste. We are looking at it from two main angles; the first is to minimise waste, and the second is to reuse it. We believe that waste is a real treasure and not just waste. Waste should be recycled, especially organic waste, which amounts to about 30 percent of the total waste in the Emirate," Lootah added. He said, "We also have to transfer waste to energy, so that ultimately there is no more than 2 percent that can be safely buried. This is to ensure that 98 percent of the land that could have been lost would have been used if ordinary landfills were used," said Lootah. "The strategic plan to deal with waste included three stages, the first phase, in which the municipality succeeded in reducing the volume of waste. For four years, it was 11,500 tonnes per day, but today it has become 5,532 tonnes per day. The municipality has also succeeded in reusing around 10 percent of waste currently. We hope, according to the UAE National Plan, by 2020, we will be able to recycle 75 percent of the volume of waste, and by 2030 we will reach a position where there is zero waste in landfills," he said. "We have 11 landfill sites in Dubai, the oldest of which is Al Qusais Landfill, which was established in 1976. It still absorbs the waste. The capacity of these landfills is different and its area is about 10.011 million square meters. Hygienic dumping is currently being carried out in six landfills, and they are at Al Qusais, Jebel Ali, Al Bayadiyah, Al Habab, Hatta, and Al-Warsan. The waste is burned in one of the landfills. Special treatment is carried out in one of the landfills while recycling is carried out in three landfills," Lootah said. During the first three months of this year, waste workers collected 328,031 tonnes of waste from all sites and areas, covered by the waste collection and disposal services provided by the department. He explained that the municipality succeeded in cleaning 17,885 kilometres since the beginning of the year. Last year it cleaned 58,887 kilometres of waste, removed 3,230 cars from the streets and 625 cars since the beginning of the year. They were confiscated at the municipalitys special network in Al Qusais. The Dubai Municipality has inaugurated nine centres for the collection of materials under the Smart Sustainability Oasis project in the Emirate of Dubai.Copyright Emirates News Agency (WAM) 2017.
