JEDDAH: The Saudi Gulf Environmental Protection Company (SEPCO) signed an MoU with UK’s environmental services Taylor Company on Tuesday that could well be the first step in changing the public’s attitude to recycling and waste management in urban areas.
The deal, which initially will see the replacement of the large plastic waste containers with smart color coded galvanized steel bins, has had very positive responses from municipal authorities across Saudi Arabia. The 1,100-liter containers are widely used in the UK and have proved hugely successful in both waste collection and encouraging a new generation to separate waste products and recycle effectively.
Adel Badeeb, managing director of SEPCO, said he was confident that the new generation of waste containers and the powerful recycling program and support services provided by Taylor Co. could bring real change to the waste disposal habits of the increasingly urbanized population in the Kingdom. “The bins are the part of the project that the public see in the street, but there is a whole program of education encouragement and change behind them,” he said. April 2009 would see SEPCO initiate an education and public awareness program that would encourage and promote recycling as part of its drive to increase recycling in the Kingdom.
Dr. David Gillett, head of sales and marketing for Taylor Co., outlined the philosophy behind the introduction of galvanized steel bins. “They are good looking, not intimidatingly large and can be designed in ways that encourages people to use them,” he said. He gave the example of “Cow Bin” project — bins decorated in the black and white colors of a Holstein dairy cow. “The effect on the public was remarkable,” he said.
“There was an increase of 61 percent in recycling tonnage from these bins. The project was accompanied by an educational package for schools. Feedback established that the public liked the bins as street art and the cow design communicated a positive environmental message.”
The bins themselves are part of the environmental message. Their long working life and lean manufacturing process produces wheelie bins that, in tests in the steel-unfriendly environment of Birmingham, have lasted 17 years and are still providing good service. Unlike plastic bins, many of which last only a few months in Jeddah, galvanized steel bins can be repaired and reconditioned at minimal expense, rather than replaced at great financial or environmental cost. Part of SEPCO’s plan for the deployment of the bins is to accompany it with a repair and refurbishment facility. In the cost-over-life equation, the steel bins cost only 40 percent as much as plastic bins and can themselves be recycled.