RECYCLING COMES HOME: ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS YOU CAN BANK ON ARRIVES

▶ Tadweer to install 16 facilities in the capital and 10 in Al Ain for residents

Separating recyclables will encourage more efficient recycling habits among residents and make the UAE more environmentally conscious.

Sixteen recycling stations are being installed across Abu Dhabi to cut the emirate’s waste disposal costs.

The first opened at Khalidiyah Public Park as a trial two months ago and enables recycling of most household items.

The station moves beyond the simple segregation of paper, cans and bottles to include wood, cardboard, mobile phones, used batteries, plastic, wool, metal and cotton. Clear and coloured glass also have their own compartments.

It was officially launched on Tuesday by the Minister of Climate Change and Environment, Dr Thani Al Zeyoudi, after a successful trial.

Sunil Thawani, 60, an Indian who lives in Khalidiyah, has walked to the station twice a week over the past two months.

“I come every Friday and a day in between to drop off waste. At home I separate the plastic from the metal from the paper, then I bring those three bags here,” he said.

“The best part about this is it has many options: cartons, cans, clear glass, bottles ... generally you only find three options but they have done very good thinking to segregate.

“To make it successful, people need to organise themselves at home otherwise they won’t do it here [at the station].”

Mr Thawani has segregated his waste for five years and said the new stations were the first “serious effort” he had seen from the municipality to encourage recycling.

“Earlier they just had separate bins and when the [rubbish] lorry comes it puts everything in one can,” he said.

However, he said the bins could be bigger, particularly for plastic, because the bins at the station overflowed on Fridays.

“This is a very small bin. On Friday it overflows because of the big pile of litter; water bottles consume a lot of volume,” he said.

The idea for the new station was born out of the municipality’s desire to create “waste management mines” across the emirate, said Dr Salem Al Kaabi, acting general manager of Tadweer.

In addition to the 16 in the city, by the end of 2018, the municipality aims to install 10 in Al Ain. They will be installed across the emirate’s hinterland and in Al Dhafra by the end of next year.

“These mines or stations will not only help the environment but also increase people’s awareness of separating rubbish. And that will reflect on the economic value of the recycled substances,” Dr Al Kaabi said.

When recyclables are thrown in regular waste, they must be separated by workers at waste disposal centres to be recycled, decreasing efficiency and increasing costs for recycling plants.

“But if you dispose of it here [in the plastic waste can] it will immediately go to the recycling factory,” Dr Al Kaabi said.

Last year, Tadweer announced plans to recycle more than 60 per cent of waste by 2020 and 75 per cent by 2021. It said it would build eight recycling plants in the emirate.

At the time, Tadweer was recycling more than 30 per cent of 797,466 tonnes of waste generated every month.

Materials collected from the recycling bins are taken to a

The new stations will reduce the time and costs of manually sorting waste and ensure more effective recycling

sorting facility in Al Ain. The plastic waste is processed into materials ready for production, while the metal, paper and glass waste are sold to the market as sorted material for other companies to recycle. Abu Dhabi has recycling plants for plastic products, used tyres, construction and demolition waste, and used engine oil.

But even with the most stringent of recycling plans, the second a resident throws a non-recyclable item in a “green bin” the process becomes futile.

Ordinary rubbish contaminates recyclables and lowers the value of the entire processing – adding costs to the disposal process and the environment. It is hoped the new stations will reduce this.

Dr Al Kaabi said three tonnes of waste were collected from the Khalidiyah recycling station in a single month, indicating that “residents want this”.

The locations for the stations will be chosen according to their proximity to popular public places and residential buildings, for easier access.

Campaigns to teach pupils about waste segregation and recycling have been under way at schools for five years, said Fatima Al Harmoudi, senior public awareness officer at Tadweer.

“And we have been distributing brochures about recycling, starting with kindergarten, for a year now.”

Tadweer asked schools to provide recycling bins in order to teach pupils how to use them.

Ms Al Harmoodi said children “must know how to recycle”.

While 70 per cent of Tadweer’s awareness programmes are directed at children, adults are also being educated.

“We visit government departments to educate employees at their offices, and other organisations, once they hear about us, they call and ask us to go to them,” Ms Al Harmoodi said.

But she said: “If you want to make amendments in a society, start with the children, don’t go to adults. This [recycling culture] is new for our societies so it must be rooted in the children’s subconscious.”

The pupils have also been proactive, she said. One Indian boy volunteered with Tadweer to distribute surveys at Lulu Hypermarket.

“He sat with them and delivered our message and because of him they opened a counter especially for customers using recyclable bags.”