Tribune News Network
Doha
The Ministry of Municipality announced the production of 558,340 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of clean energy, throughout the period of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, through recycling the waste of the tournament.
Engineer Hamad Jassim Al Bahr, director of the Waste Recycling and Treatment Department at the Ministry of Municipality, said the tournament contributed to supplying national factories specialised in recycling operations with about 1,129.25 tonnes of basic raw materials required for factories, which included paper, cardboard, plastic, metal and glass materials.
He pointed out that 72 percent of the waste generated was recycled while 28 percent was converted into clean energy. According to him, these figures, which have never been recorded by any of the host countries of the previous World Cup tournaments, were achieved in cooperation with the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy (SC) and the private sector, and thus helping Qatar fulfilled its obligations in making the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 a sustainable and environmentally friendly tournament.
Engineer Bahar pointed out that the Waste Recycling and Treatment Department succeeded in producing about 797.01 tonnes of fertilisers through the recycling of waste generated from stadiums and fan areas, 202.48 tonnes of plastic materials, 65.43 tonnes of paper and cardboard, as well as 60,000 tonnes of waste, 57 tonnes of mineral materials and about 4.47 tonnes of glass materials.
He added that the total waste and residuals received from the tournament stadiums amounted to about 2,173.31 tonnes and the volume of waste raised by the Public Cleanliness Department was about 54,865 tonnes collected by 12,230 workers, using about 1,627 trucks and cleaning equipment.
He praised the constructive cooperation of the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy and the various parties concerned with organising the activities of the World Cup, which resulted in these positive outcomes.
He stressed that the committee made several visits to the Waste Treatment Centre in Mesaieed, which is the largest waste treatment centre in the Middle East, that provides environmental solutions to ensure sustainability and receives all waste transported from waste transfer stations throughout Qatar.
The centre, which has a total capacity of 2,300 tonnes of waste per day, treats all the waste and produces clean energy, green and organic fertiliser from it.
The Ministry of Municipality had prepared a comprehensive and integrated plan for the waste recycling programme for stadiums to be used in the manufacturing process in competent and sustainable ways.
Before the World Cup, the ministry also launched a comprehensive programme for sorting solid waste and allocated four stations for the removal of mobile emergency waste in locations close to the stadiums, in addition to permanent transfer stations, in order to achieve the safe disposal of special waste generated in the World Cup and to exploit these materials that will contribute to stimulating the private sector to invest in waste recycling industries to increase its contribution to the gross domestic product and to increase the value of industrial exports by selling them in the local and foreign markets.
The plan implemented by the ministry, represented by the Department of Public Cleanliness and the Department of Waste Recycling and Treatment, in cooperation with other parties in the country, included setting up multiple points for containers, the stage of unloading the container, the method of transporting waste to waste collection sites in the transfer stations, and safe disposal in places designated for recycling process.