Nada Hammad, a member of the Shatie District Center Council, said the campaign which was carried out in Rowda district faced a number of obstacles. “We spent many days looking for an organization to provide us with a legal umbrella for our work,” she said.
Finally, the campaign began with the support of the Rowda District Center after many similar centers refused to back it. “The Rowda Center approved the campaign under a program entitled ‘Our District Is Clean,’ which had already received official approval,” Hammad pointed out.
She said the volunteers, mostly young Saudi men and women, found difficulty in getting a place to carry out their campaign as public schools refused to allow the use of their premises. “We carried out the campaign using only two private schools in the district,” she said.
The volunteers wanted to continue their public-awareness campaign for another month, targeting shoppers at major commercial centers and malls. But they were afraid that it would take a long time for them to get permission from government authorities.
“We were also afraid that government departments may impose conditions that would negatively affect the voluntary campaign, which has been organized without seeking any material benefit,” she said.
Hammad praised Abdullah Al-Ghazal of the Faculty of Environmental Design at King Abdulaziz University for supporting the campaign.
Speaking about some of the results of the campaign, she said: “We learned that about 70 percent of residents in Rowda district — some of them with degrees and others who have studied abroad — had little knowledge of the benefits to society of recycling garbage.”
She said the campaigners had explained to the public how to recycle garbage. “We have also benefited from the successful experiments of King Abdulaziz University in the field,” she said.
Some institutions allocate separate containers for collecting different kinds of garbage, such as glass, paper and metals. “Separating them in this way will facilitate the recycling process,” Hammad pointed out.
