Rubbish being piled into vast landfills in the desert could instead yield almost Dh400 million (US$108m) in annual recycling revenue and generate power for tens of thousands of homes under a plan being considered by the Abu Dhabi Government.
A typical resident produces more than three tonnes of rubbish a year, one of the highest volumes in the world. Not only does this come at a huge environmental cost, but it represents a missed opportunity to make money.
"Everybody treats waste as a charity operation. What we're trying to do is establish a value for it," said Paul Dumble, a waste systems specialist charged with developing and implementing the plan for the Government's Centre for Waste Management. Of the 5.4 million tonnes of refuse now sent to landfills every year, the Government envisages recycling up to 69 per cent and converting another 17 per cent into biomass fuel within five to 10 years.
Abu Dhabi has almost no recycling facilities. A pilot scheme this year collected several hundred tonnes of recyclables from residents in Khalidiya, Officers City and Bain al Jesrain, but the segregated waste was left in storage at a site outside the capital. Some private companies maintain their own programmes to recycle industrial materials such as steel and concrete. But by pulling recyclable materials out of rubbish and selling them to industries such as paper mills and metals plants, the Government could earn Dh381m a year, based on the average prices such materials have commanded this year, Mr Dumble said.
In addition, organic waste could generate up to 463 megawatts of electricity, worth Dh119m, through technologies that turn the rubbish into combustible gas instead of direct burning, he said. "We're trying desperately to move away from straight incineration." Responsibility for building a power plant to burn the biomass or gas would be left to the Abu Dhabi Water Electricity Authority or another specialised government entity, Mr Dumble said.
Similarly, other government entities or private companies would need to build the plants to process the recycled material delivered by the centre. "We do need the support of these other entities in order to deliver these targets," he said. By December, the centre will receive bids from private companies for a contract to collect, separate and deliver the waste to buyers including metal plants and power companies.
Until the bids come in, officials will not know how much of the development cost would be covered by the estimated recycling and energy revenues. Experience from other countries shows that such revenues were unlikely to cover the full cost of the project, which would require additional government support, said Vivek Gautam, a south Asia and Middle East waste expert at Frost and Sullivan, a management consultancy.
"The support may be in terms of making project land available at lower than market cost, or compensating the project company via tipping fees which are ultimately passed to waste generators or the government," Mr Gautam said. In the Gulf, where electricity prices are kept low by government mandate, the gap between costs and revenues from the waste was likely to be even larger. The major challenge would be persuading residents, businesses and government agencies to segregate their waste into separate bins for glass, paper and metals, Mr Dumble said. "The basic thing we need to do is develop a process to convince people to do the right thing with their waste."
Mr Gautam said the economics of the project would depend heavily on the success of grassroots efforts such as these. "In case waste is not properly segregated at source, this adversely affects the economic viability of the project," he said. "Experience in developed societies indicate that … it becomes necessary to impose taxes or other charges to foster desirable behaviour among the residents."
