Saudi should unlock waste recycling income: report

by CW Staff on Jul 9, 2013

Laying waste to the desert is affordable only in the very short term; recycling would make returns in a very realistic timeframe.

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Economist Fadl Al-Bu'ainain has detailed that Saudi Arabia should learn from its neighbours and form partnerships with international companies to process its waste in a manner that profits the economy.

He said the Kingdom should learn from neighboring countries, such as Bahrain, where a foreign firm is already handling its waste to generate profit that are now being pumped back into the economy.

Al-Bu'ainain said: 'It's a win-win arrangement. The company does the garbage collection work, and also makes money out of the recycling work. This helps it pay the fees required by the Bahraini government and make a hefty margin through recycling.

He added said that recycling sites in Saudi Arabia are still marginal, and that while the municipalities in various parts of Saudi Arabia say that they are recycling the waste, 'this is totally untrue. This is just talk.'

He also noted that the Makkah Mayoralty, which complains about the volume of Haj waste each season, could also sign contracts with leading companies to collect the garbage and recycle the waste.

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A number of specialist studies indicate that the Kingdom wastes around $10.7m by unnecessarily dumping waste where other countries the materials and make useful revenues in the process.

According to the Jeddah Mayoralty, the annual volume of waste there alone is about 2 million tonnes.

Proctor & Gamble is one company that has already waded into the fray. Yaseen Al-Attas, director of public relations for Middle East and North Africa, noted: 'We work with partners to reduce the amount of waste and ensure new streams of revenue for our facilities here in Saudi Arabia.

'We use modern technology to separate and sort out various types of waste. For us, industrial water is not a problem; it's an opportunity. We capitalize on such opportunities for the benefit of our consumers, the environment and the company,' he said.

In 2011, the company launched packages for Pantene that were made of plants.