The collected recyclable bottles and cans in a warehouse. Kamal Kassim / Gulf Today

Mariecar Jara-Puyod, Senior Reporter

The Culture of Recycling in the UAE is growing rich.

This is from the statistics of a private company which introduced in November 2020 a free downloadable app in the capital and which is nearing its target of 1,000 tonnes of collected  recyclables – at least of plastic containers and aluminium cans – for 2023.

“Today, even in the first six months of 2023, we already have collected 450 tonnes from 60,000 households in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Seventy per cent are from Abu Dhabi. Thirty per cent are from Dubai. It is interesting because our objective in 2023 is to only collect 1,000 tonnes. But, it is only half of the year and we already reached 450 tonnes,” Jerome Viricel said.

Viricel is the general manager of RECAPP, part of the French transnational company Veolia which is into water and waste management and energy services.

Gulf Today visited the RECAPP Warehouse in Al Quoz, Dubai late last week. It is here – alongside a “double the size warehouse” in Musaffah, Abu Dhabi – where the second step in breathing life to waste, categorised as in their “end-of-life,” is done.

The initiative was developed to come with a rewards system. It is backed by the Environment Agency Abu Dhabi.

Viricel said that for the entire year of 2021 and in the capital only, 114 tonnes of supposed waste instead of 70 tonnes were collected from 14,000 households.

“For the second year and that is 2022 when we opened here in Dubai, we reached 558 tonnes from 32,000 households in both Abu Dhabi and Dubai,” he added.

Enquired of any feasibility study conducted that led to the recycling collection app, Viricel said that before the 2020 launch, the waste produced across the UAE was “between 2.4 and 2.9 kilogrammes per day per inhabitant and between 450 and 500 water plastic bottles per year per inhabitant so there was a lot of waste. Less than 12 per cent of the water bottles were recycled.”

Management decided to expand the recyclable collections to other items which now include coffee capsules that app users dump into cartons of recyclable material strategically placed in public areas as well as inside business establishments. An industrial partner transports these to the Beeah Group in Sharjah for the completion of the circular economy.

With the invention of the recyclable collection app was the production of transparent plastic trash bags. This is for practical reasons for everything inside these bags which, according to Viricel are also recyclable, must be “compliant.”

“People must learn how to sort garbage from the source,” Viricel said, adding that what needs to be inside are only the recyclables. For safety and health reasons, there should be no trace of contaminable food waste or left-over.  

Seventeen drivers who work on shifts collect the transparent plastic bags which must have a total volume of 2.5 to three kilogrammes. The drivers are guided each day to take routes with less carbon footprint spent.

Mohammad Sohail who collected 55 plastic bags on July 12 said: “I am going to Dubai Marina today to pick up 24 plastic bags from different households.”

The collected items are re-sorted at the Musaffah and Al Quoz warehouses by 14 male staff to make sure that the plastic containers which come in various make and form as well as the aluminium cans are segregated properly before the automatic baling. The baled are then transferred to any of the eight RECAPP industrial partners within the UAE for specific re-purposing.

Viricel noted that it has always been the transparent water bottles manufactured with the polyethylene terephthalene material that is most collected at “65 per cent” or 292.50 tonnes out of the 450 tonnes as of mid-2023.

These are either transformed into polyester fibre for cushions and pillows, and into plastic straps used to tightly seal boxes. Flower pots and plastic pallettes are the products of recycled plastic containers made of high density polythelene commonly used for milk, shampoo, detergents and bleaches. The aluminium cans become aluminium sheets.

“We want to close the loop with industrial partners within the country we operate in,” Viricel said, adding that their target beginning 2024 is to establish their presence as well in the Northern Emirates.