Bee’ah Working Closer To Making Sharjah A Zero-Waste Emirate

Bee’ah Sets Waste Management Strategy for 2015

Bee’ah – the Middle East’s leading and award winning integrated environmental and waste management company – has begun laying out the roadmap and setting its zero-waste strategic plans for the Emirate of Sharjah. The plan outlines the goals required to be achieved in order to divert 100% of generated waste from landfill for use as other resources and significantly decrease the environmental impact caused from waste pollution.

“Looking at Zero-waste from an economical point-of-view, by extracting the valuable materials for recycling will lead to less costs and resources to extract new material from the Earth, this practice helps people and companies prosper while using fewer inputs – all the while contributing to a sustainable environment and economy,” said Chairman of Bee’ah, H.E. Salim Al Owais. “From a waste management point of view, diverting all waste from landfill will lead to less dependence on landfills and will help revolutionize our waste management processes.”

Through the use of international best practices and by operating in line with the guiding principles of the ISO9001 and the ISO14000, Bee’ah is adopting a Cradle to Cradle programme focusing on the 4 R’s – reduce, re-use, recycle, recover. These practices are embedded within the Waste Management Centre in Al Saj’ah, which houses state-of-the-art facilities for the systematic segregation and processing of waste into valuable resources, including the Material Recovery Facility, the Tyre Recycling Facility, Construction & Demolition Waste Recycling Facility and the Compost Plant, amongst others.

The latest facility to join the list of waste management operations is the newly built car shredding and recycling facility, which forms part of its integrated waste management solution, and is in its commissioning phase, and will be fully operational by the end of the fourth quarter of 2012. Its main purpose is the shredding of old car bodies and other light metal scrap, with the aim of segregating the individual metal, glass and plastic components for recycling.

“What Sharjah has reached, many other cities have taken decades to get to. Bee’ah is a young company and we are already diverting 40% of waste from the landfill and next year we will achieve more than 50%,” commented Khaled Al Huraimel, CEO of Bee’ah. “We are serious about leading environmental change, and aim to get to our zero-waste goal, as well as implement our expertise not only in Sharjah but in other markets as well.”

Bee’ah will be investing and updating its current strategy to focus on diverting waste from 50% diversion to zero-waste, while exploring solutions to treat the unrecyclable materials. An internal Strategy Team has been formed to identify the most suitable, cost-effective and sustainable future waste management options for Bee’ah and the Emirate of Sharjah. The technologies currently being looked at are waste to energy solutions, particularly incineration, gasification and anaerobic digestion, with careful consideration taken to provide the highest output that will not have effect on the environment in terms of emissions.

“Converting household waste into energy will help Sharjah become a more sustainable Emirate. We are carefully studying the various projects for waste-to-energy as certain schemes can create harmful pollutants to the ecosystem; when our main aim is to reduce our carbon footprint, and at the same time achieve a zero-waste output,” said Mr. Khaled Al Huraimel, CEO of Bee’ah. “What is certain here is that Bee’ah is definitely stepping closer to attaining our short and long-term targets and I am confident that we will achieve this by 2015.”

The company is now prepared to take on and apply its knowledge and expertise in other regions of the UAE. In March 2012, Bee’ah expanded its operations into the Emirate of Dubai and is in discussions with key developers in Dubai, to become the exclusive contractor in waste management and cleaning. Bee’ah is seeking further expansion to Abu Dhabi and the Northern Emirates, as well as other markets in the GCC in the coming years.

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