Maryam Boukhatamine (Ras Al Khaimah)
The Director-General of the Department of Public Services in Ras Al Khaimah, Engineer Ahmed Mohammed Al Hammadi, revealed to Al-Ittihad that the department’s waste sorting plant sorts annually about 30,000 tons of solid municipal waste for recycling, and 100% of medical waste is treated through a process Incineration “about 800 to 1,000 tons per year”, and about 400,000 tons of demolition and construction waste are reused.
Al Hammadi indicated that the sorting factory, which was established in 2002, was modernized and provided with the latest mechanisms and technologies, and was officially inaugurated on November 27, 2019. Magnet and eddy current separation technology, which is used to automatically separate metal cans from the rest of the waste, indicating that the sorting process begins since the municipal solid waste collection vehicles are unloaded with waste bags at the factory, and therefore the waste bags are opened automatically, then the waste is transported through the conveyor belt and separated Waste is automatically based on size and type, then separated manually on sorting lines according to type. The recovered materials are compressed for each type separately, and stored in the factory until they are finally transported to recycling plants inside or outside the country.
He added, “The factory burns municipal solid waste, and it is sorted for recycling, with the exception of burning medical waste only in an environmentally safe manner in a dedicated incinerator.”
Waste types
Regarding the number of landfills in the emirate, he said: “There are two landfills, Al-Jazirah Al-Hamra landfill, where all types of waste are received, such as: municipal solid waste, recyclable materials, industrial waste and hazardous waste, and Al-Saadi landfill, where clean and separated demolition and construction waste are received.”
Al Hammadi noted that the role of the department does not stop at this point, but the competent authority of the institution conducts awareness and education campaigns for the community to make them aware of the importance of sorting waste and waste and allocating places for the waste sorting process distributed throughout the emirate, not to mention allocating guidance and awareness panels for the public.
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