A COMPREHENSIVE study is being sought on a proposal to have a centralised sorting centre for recyclable waste set up within the soon-to-be-full Hafeera landfill site.
The Southern Municipal Council wants the Municipalities Affairs and Agriculture Ministry to look into ways of reducing the amount of dumped waste, totalling around 1.7 million tonnes annually, as its 2025 lifespan nears.
Council chairman Abdulla Abdullatif, who is behind the proposal, is suggesting that the sorting centre be prefabricated or portable to ensure faster implementation.
Complementing the idea, Mr Abdullatif also suggests the landfill site facility be open 18 hours a day instead of the current 16, which would be from 2am until 6pm.
“We have problems with actual ‘source sorting’ as the government has not yet introduced coloured bags for all homes and businesses, or made it mandatory to segregate waste through law.
“In some areas coloured bins have been set up but they lack proper monitoring and cleaning,” he claimed.
“Cleaning companies in parts of the GCC, Asia and Central America take black garbage bags to purpose-made centres to sort items for recycling, reuse, re-manufacturing, compressing or dumping.
“This means that the habit of recycling is done through a middle man, rather than the actual source, before whatever is considered non-recyclable gets buried in landfill,” he said.
The GDN reported last year that the government had tasked the Supreme Council for Environment (SCE) to conduct three studies on the best way forward:
Waste source segregation (at home)
Sorting centres (in different locations)
Or a hybrid solution – involving a combination of both home and external sorting.
The conclusions of the studies have yet to be revealed.
Cleaning services in the Capital and Muharraq Governorates are handled by Gulf City Cleaning Company and in the Southern and Northern Governorates by Urbaser Bahrain, which also runs the landfill site.
Urbaser Bahrain projects and operations’ manager Yasin Mukthar said a sorting centre would be a completely different concept all together than the current operation of cleaning streets or taking rubbish as it comes.
“We take black plastic bags and dump them into the landfill site as stated in our cleaning contract without any sorting being involved at the moment,” he said.
“The centre is a completely different operation as it would require a large investment in time, manpower and machinery.”
Profits from the sale of recycled items would not cover the initial outlay and operational costs, he added.
“We are not against environmental-friendly initiatives or recycling ideas, the company has an involvement in many such projects around the world,” he added. “This is more about feasibility issues and whether different modified contracts would be offered. If that was the case, then we would be delighted to take on the sorting centre and even operate mini-centres across the country.”
He said Urbaser was already collecting segregated rubbish from coloured bins provided in a few selected locations in Bahrain. “We sell paper, plastic, metal and glass to different recycling companies in Bahrain but that involves already separated waste and is not time-consuming.”
Mr Mukhtar said the proposed extended opening of the landfill site ‘wasn’t a big issue’ although agreed waste collection timings might have to be adjusted under new agreements to cater for recycling demands.
The government has already started giving out biodegradable rubbish bags to Bahrainis as the country moves towards a more sustainable future.
mohammed@gdnmedia.bh
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