JEDDAH, 24 August 2003 — The newly commissioned recycling plant run by SKAB/SADACA just outside Jeddah, is facing operational difficulties due to a shortage of useable raw material.
There is no shortage of organic matter or glass, but the aluminum, steel, plastic and cardboard, the revenue generating part of the operation which make the plant self-financing, are being taken from garbage containers and sold to local middle-men for export.
This threatens the operation and puts in doubt the viability of the two projected recycling plants in Makkah and Riyadh.
The idea for the operation was proposed by the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs and a study was set up to examine feasibility. Studies for the project in 1994 assumed a stable or increasing volume of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) and the plant was designed to be self-financing and yield a profit based on those figures.
The government benefited from the scheme in many ways, not least as it was able to dispose of Jeddah’s garbage in an environmentally friendly way and reduce pressure on the overused landfill site near Briman.
The project was set up on the basis of those studies and currently processes about 30 percent of Jeddah’s daily MSW. To dispose of the balance, there are new integrated ideas for an electricity-generating plant that incinerates MSW to generate electricity for the city.
The new recycling plant combines the frequently contradictory elements of environmental care and profitability. Environmental care usually costs money and no commercial operation willingly works for negative profit.
During the feasibility studies, much attention was drawn to the potential profit from recycling garbage.
“Suddenly, the scavengers became interested,” said Hamad Musallam, the deputy general manager of SKAB/SADAKA, the company operating the recycling plant. “They began picking out from the garbage containers the items on which the project was based. They got stored in simple sheds and then exported.”
Since then, the urban scavengers have had a serious impact on the amount of profitable garbage for recycling. Saleable materials — aluminum, cardboard and clean plastic — are removed and sold to middlemen and exported largely to Asia.
The low-yield garbage is then much less profitable. Local Saudi companies that use and recycle useable materials inside the Kingdom suffer from the dwindling supply of good quality material.
SKAB/SADAKA supplied figures that showed the gravity of the problem. Since 1994, cardboard and paper retrieval has dropped 58 percent, aluminum by 67 percent and recyclable plastic by 78 percent.
The retrieval rate of pure aluminum has dropped by a massive 91 percent. The figures are probably even higher as they haven’t been corrected for the increased volume of MSW produced by an expanding population.
“Also within those figures,” said Hamad, “is hidden the fact that a high percentage of the card and paper retrieved is unusable for recycling in any way other than as compost. A lot of it has been polluted by oil and cannot be used in the papermaking process again.
The whole process is more complicated than just processing MSW,” he said. “There needs to be a holistic approach to recycling and an integrated policy to implement it. If there is no regulation on the removal of profitable elements from garbage, then we cannot finance the process and the environment and the community will suffer.”
Hamad sees the way forward as a combination of approaches. “We need a change of mind-set, beginning with education at an early age, regulation of removal and sale of the profitable element of the process and humane treatment of the scavengers who rely on the garbage for a living,” he said.
“If we cannot make this pay, then the three plants — Jeddah and the new ones ready to be built in Makkah and Riyadh — are in jeopardy.”
This will have a deleterious effect on the environment. The high-yield garbage finances the plants but they also process all the other non-profitable garbage as well. Should the plants stop, organic and ‘green’ waste will no longer return to the land as high-grade compost and all the garbage now being processed will go to landfills or be dumped in out of the way places.
The government is a partner in this as it is charged with looking after the interests of citizens and having a clean city is part of that. Governments around the world are asking the private sector to shoulder some of the load of caring for the environment.
To do this efficiently, there has to be a planned approach. “We, as a private enterprise, are happy to take on some of the environmental projects,” said Hamad, “but we expect that they give us regulations that apply to everybody. Without it, we are left with little more than a hole in the ground!”
The company is heavily involved in businesses related to the preservation and improvement of the environment from cleaning to recycling. “We chose environmental concerns partly for commercial reasons and partly as they make a real and visible contribution to the national economy and the land we live in,” said Hamad. “Environmental concerns here are increasingly high profile and affect everyone. We want to be involved.”
He feels that a simple piece of legislation would help the situation immensely. “As a partner and shareholder for whom this project provides two services apart from re-using valuable materials, it would seem that they would benefit from regulating the high-grading that is damaging the project.”
There is a misconception in some government circles that the scavengers are doing the community a service by removing cardboard and useable materials, said Hamad. “In fact, what they are doing is removing them and sending them for export without paying attention to our national interests.”
As a result, the Kingdom is losing a valuable source of revenue and threatening a truly beneficial, self-financing environmental asset in the recycling plants.
