Sharjah is facing a looming waste-disposal crisis that can be averted only by increased emphasis on recycling schemes, educating consumers and the introduction of dumping fees, says the man charged with managing the emirate's main landfill site. Every day, as many as 900 lorries deliver between 8,500 and 10,000 tonnes of waste to the site, midway between Sharjah City and the inland town of Al Dhaid on the E88 highway. Occasionally, says Reinhard Goschl, general director of Emirates Environmental Technology, a company that manages the facility on behalf of Sharjah Municipality, the daily tonnage is as high as 14,000 tonnes.
Since the site was opened in 1991, the daily consignments of demolition rubble, household rubbish, old tyres and chemicals have been heaped into what has become a minor mountain of waste. Sharjah's problem is a microcosm of the crisis facing the entire UAE as the nation's rapid expansion continues. In July, Abu Dhabi announced it was planning to clean up six sprawling landfill sites on the edge of the city, where years of uncontrolled dumping were threatening to lead to widespread pollution.
Emirates Environmental Technology took over the running of the Sharjah site in June 2006, days after hundreds of thousands of tyres at the site caught fire. In May it opened the first of what will be a series of "cell" storage units; it is 12 metres deep and has a capacity of 3.1 million cubic metres - equivalent to 1,240 Olympic-size swimming pools. Such is the volume of material, however, that the first cell will soon be full.
"We are now standing on four or five metres of waste," said Klaus Leirer, the company's project manager, stepping out of his vehicle in the middle of the cell. Once the cell has been filled to "point zero" - ground level - the rubbish hill will be allowed to grow to between 20 and 30 metres high before the cell is closed. "This should be enough for the next 18 months; the amount of waste we receive is very high," said Mr Leirer.
Not counting construction waste, which accounts for 60 per cent of all rubbish received at the site, if the amount of household and industrial waste going into the landfill is divided by the number of people the facility serves, each person is responsible for three kilograms a day. In Austria, Mr Goschl's and Mr Leirer's homeland, per capita waste generation is less than one kilogram per day. Mr Goschl believes one way to reduce the volume of waste in the emirate is to introduce tipping fees for the commercial generators of waste. At the moment, charges are made only for hazardous waste and that generated in the emirate's free zones, while all others dumping rubbish face only the cost of transportation.
"Two or three years after a fee is introduced, the attitude towards waste will change completely," he said. "Now, the Government is subsidising everybody." The question of fees has been discussed by decision-makers in Sharjah and the rest of the country, but no action has been taken. Yet in addition to encouraging waste generators to take measures to reduce the amount of rubbish they produce, said Mr Goschl, fees would also generate funds for recycling facilities, which in turn would reduce the amount of waste heading for landfill.
Humaid al Mualla, project engineer at Sharjah Municipality, blames the large amount of waste on a lack of awareness among residents. "To educate people here, it will take a long time," he said. Some recycling initiatives are under way. Since November 2007, Emirates Environmental Technology has been operating a Dh40 million plant recycling construction waste. In one nine-hour shift it can process 9,000 tonnes of waste - a figure set to double next month when another shift is to be introduced - and produces aggregate that can be used to build roads and make cement and bricks.
Sharjah Municipality also operates a tyre-recycling plant, but its capacity is smaller than the volume of tyres arriving at the landfill. Another material with good potential for salvage is timber, 200 tonnes of which arrive at the site every day. It accounts for only 2.2 per cent of all the waste received at the landfill, but currently some 500,000 cubic metres of wood are stored there. According to Mr Goschl, two private companies have expressed interest in re-using the timber - one wanted to make boards for the construction industry, the other was interested in developing lightweight "bricks". A decision on how to use the wood is expected within six months.
Another urgent issue facing the municipality is the safety of its waste mountain. The landfill's new cell, lined to prevent toxic waste leaching into the surrounding soil and groundwater, complies with modern health and safety standards. But the eight million cubic metres of existing waste does not. Improvements could also be made to the way hazardous waste is managed, admits Mr Leirer. In one small area of the landfill, the management keeps a load of barrels filled with chemicals. Many were found discarded in the desert and brought to the landfill by municipal workers. A guard has been mounted over the barrels, but the hot desert climate is a far from ideal environment for potentially combustible materials.
The majority of the site's hazardous waste consists of sludge from the oil industry, contaminated soil and residue from the perfume industry. In July alone, the landfill received almost 1,000 tonnes of this cocktail, said Mr Goschl. "We have it under control but we know it is not the best way," he said. He had submitted a proposal to the municipality for the construction of a treatment plant that could neutralise the waste, allowing it to be stored in a separate landfill. If approval was given, he said, it could be up and running within two years. vtodorova@thenational.ae