Qatar yet to take recyling seriously

IF YOU have been thinking of getting piles of paper, plastic and glass recycled, you will have to wait for some more time as the recycling industry in Qatar is still in its infancy.

Although the cabinet set up a full-fledged Ministry of Environment in July, the recycling initiatives are still mostly undertaken by non-governmental organisations. And their campaigns are only at the awareness level and that too focusing on children.

No one Gulf Times spoke to had any idea of how much waste we generate that can be recycled and reused.

“We are developing the Arab Recycling Initiative that consists of two parts: a pan-Arab version of a recycling guidebook named Rashid and Dana – The Recyclers’, and a website that will promote networking between all stakeholders,” Mark Sutcliffe, Unesco Doha Office’s Natural Science Section programme assistant, told Gulf Times.

Besides providing general views on the recycle, reduce and reuse possibilities combined with the school and students activities, the guidebook and website will offer statistical data, Sutcliffe said.

Sutcliffe, however, strongly believed that waste management, while contributing to cleaner landscapes, cities and environments, must be linked to economic incentives vis-à-vis cost savings and job generation.

Qatar does not have laws or regulations on recycling.

The Friends of Environment (FEC) has been running a recycling programme since 1999 – with varying degrees of intensity – during which it provides colour-coded bins for paper, aluminium, yellow for plastic, blue for paper, green for glass, and brown for food and 120 schools.

“However, when it comes to collection and recycling of the gathered trash, we don’t have very many factories in Qatar,” FEC manager Adil Rahman said. The FEC has tied up with local factories that take plastic and paper.

But no one knows what happens to aluminium cans.

“I see these guys picking up Pepsi cans all day long. I think they send them to Dubai,” Rahman added.

Almost everyone thought the focus was only on children and not on a larger scale.

“There is a reason for that – it is really very hard to change the habits of the older generation. So we are trying to ‘catch them young’. It’s time-consuming and requires a lot of patience. It will take a generation to make things environmentally anyway,” MES Indian School environment official Shakil Ahmad Kakvi said.

MES’s programme started in 1994 and peaked in 2000-02 before losing its intensity. Al Khor Community also launched a first-of-its-kind recycling programme last year, where colour-coded bins were provided to schools and placed on curb sides.

An official at the Al Suweidi Paper Factory, the only facility in Qatar that recycles paper, said their daily capacity was 42-43 tonnes.

“We have 35 trucks that work round-the-clock and around 70 personnel involved in collection,” the official said.

According to him, recycling of newspaper and other printed material requires additional chemicals.

The only plastic recyclers in the country, Doha Plastic, could not be reached. Not much could be found on aluminium recycling – the most lucrative in the international market – except that it’s shipped to Dubai.