JEDDAH, 18 July 2004 — In what could be the first move to phase out the thousands of orange garbage skips that have become a feature of the Jeddah streetscape, the municipality announced the launch of a new household garbage collection program yesterday.
Deputy Mayor for Services Dr. Walead Abdulaal announced the start of pilot schemes to collect household garbage from individual premises rather than from street corners.
“There are several reasons for the change,” Dr. Abdulaal told Arab News. “Using securely tied garbage bags and daily collection will reduce the potential for disease, the breeding environment for insects and rodents and free up road space.”
With daily collection, the garbage will be on the street for less time, also reducing the chances of attack by the city’s huge population of feral cats. It will also signal the beginning of the end for Jeddah’s trash sorters who rummage through the skips to remove salable clean cardboard and aluminum cans.
Dr. Abdulaal thought that while they (the trash sorters) will be affected in terms of earning a living from the bins, the health and environmental hazards posed by having open garbage skips in Jeddah’s climate and with a rapidly increasing population compounding the problem, the health and welfare of Jeddah residents has to come first.
The longer-term plan, he said, is to change the people’s attitude to the disposal of domestic waste. “By encouraging people to put their waste in bags and place them outside their residences for collection actually involves them in the disposal process to a greater degree,” he said. “We can move mountains, but it takes far longer to change people’s habits. This is the second step — the first being the Jeddah Cleanup — in an education process that will take time.”
The pilot schemes will start with 800 dwellings in Al-Shatea area in northwest Jeddah and 500 units in the Prince Fawaz housing project in south Jeddah within a month. Initially, an information campaign will begin in the selected areas with information tents and leaflet distribution reaching every household.
A questionnaire asking the opinion of householders for the most convenient collection time aims to involve the householder in the decision-making process. Once the information and awareness scheme is complete, a full three-month domestic collection program will begin. For the duration of the schemes, free garbage bags will be handed out — itself part of the pilot to establish the most effective type. Collection from outside the dwellings will be once a day at the same time each day so that householders time their waste disposal to minimize the time the garbage stays on the street.
If the pilot schemes are successful, then the bag collection system will increase incrementally over the next three years to cover the 560,000 housing units in the Jeddah urban area. Under the banner, “Jeddah: Your Home and Mine”, the municipality hopes to get the cooperation of its residents to help look after their own environment. “As an official body, we can do a lot,” said Dr. Abdulaal, “but to close the circle of municipality and waste contractor we need the third element, an informed and cooperative citizenry.”
Dr. Abdulaal acknowledges this might take even a couple of generations. “We have made a start, we are reaching children in schools — we are confident of long-term results,” he said.
