Dulsco begins construction of Dubai Industrial Park recycling plant

The market potential for waste management in the region could double over the next five years. Antonie Robertson / The National

Dulsco, the Dubai-based waste management company, has started the construction of a 500,000 square feet recycling facility at Dubai Industrial Park.

The Dh25 million project, which is scheduled for completion in 2018, will include a fully automated waste sorting line with a capacity to sort through five tonnes of rubbish per hour.

Dulsco, which employs about 12,000 people in the UAE and Qatar, said that it was starting work on a 200,000 sq ft first phase of the recycling plant which will also host a fleet maintenance workshop and a recycling and materials recovery plant.

The new plant is one of a number of facilities being set up across the UAE in an attempt to meet ambitious environmental targets and to take advantage of the growing market for waste disposal.

In 2012, the Dubai Government announced it planned to reduce the percentage of rubbish being sent to landfill in the emirate to zero by 2030, down from about 80 or 90 per cent at the time.

Last month Tadweer, the centre of waste management, which operates eight recycling plants in Abu Dhabi, said it planned to increase the amount of waste it recycles from about 30 per cent of the 797,466 tonnes it processes each month to more than 60 per cent by 2020 and 75 per cent by 2021.

Traditionally waste in the UAE, as well as the rest of the GCC, has been sent to landfill sites. But as the population rapidly expands, the amount of rubbish generated has snowballed, leaving the country with one of the highest per capita waste figures in the world and the country’s overstretched dumps struggling to cope.

According to research firm Frost & Sullivan, the total amount of waste generated across the GCC is set to increase from 94 million tonnes in 2015 to as high as 120 million tonnes by 2020, spurred by increases across the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

The company predicts that the market potential for waste management in the region could double over the next five years.

“In the GCC region, population, growth and urbanisation have caused an alarming increase in the generation of waste,” said Saud Abu Al Shawareb, chief operating officer at Dubai Industrial Park. “This calls for an urgent need to implement innovative methods to ensure the reduction and recycling of waste.”

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