Jeddah Municipality has launched a massive recycling initiative that would see it transform waste into organic fuel, fertilizer and other raw materials.

“For this purpose 6,000 tons of construction waste has been collected. With the help of special incinerators the paper waste will be burned at 1,200 degrees Celsius,” said Sami Khalaf, the municipality’s director general of hygiene.

Khalaf said the municipality has a new dumping ground of over 5.2 million square meters where six units would be processing 1,440 tons of waste a day. The waste is separated manually by 218 workers working in 12 lines at each unit.

Objects smaller than 40 mm in size are separated with the help of funnels and the bigger material is turned into dry fuel. The organic waste is treated for eight weeks to produce 1,500 tons of organic fertilizer daily.