United Arab Emirates: Children lead the way in recycling

United Arab Emirates is making a huge impact on recycling.  Could we do this in the USA?  Who will lead?  (Story by Vesela Todorova in the UAE's The National online newspaper edition.) A scheme in which pupils at 10 schools in Al Ain are recycling as many as 50,000 plastic water bottles every month could be rolled out nationwide next year.
The pilot scheme, in which pupils use a machine to shrink the bottles to a tenth of their original size, could eventually cover one in every four schools, said Fasahat Beg, the general manager of Al Ain Mineral Water Company, which launched the project with Horizon Technologies, a Fujairah-based recycling facility.

Plastic bottles are relatively easy to recycle, but in the absence of municipal recycling schemes in most of the UAE, they are buried in landfills. Plastic takes hundreds of years to decompose.

The bottles are made of polyethylene terephthalate, also known as PET. A leading consumer of bottled water, the UAE uses around 80,000 tonnes of the material every year, said Rajnish Sinha, the general manager of Horizon Technologies. One tonne of PET is enough to manufacture 40,000 bottles, he said.

“We are talking about billions of bottles,” said Mr Beg.

With a market share of 24 per cent, the Al Ain Mineral Water Company is not shy to admit to its impact. It produces 13 million units – bottles of different sizes and the caps to seal them.

“PET recycling is an issue in this country and we are a leading producer of PET bottles in this market,” said Mr Beg, explaining why the company chose to launch the scheme.

Currently, the bottled water producer’s role is to ensure the plastics are gathered by schools and then transported to a Fujairah-based processing facility. At a later stage, however, Mr Beg and his team will be keen to review how recycled plastic can be utilised in the company’s products.

But before a nationwide scheme is unveiled, the company must have a clear idea of how many bottles can be recycled per month and what are the logistical requirements of the operation as it grows in scale.

The pilot scheme in Al Ain is to provide the answers. Ten schools in the city joined the campaign over September and October last year. The results have so far been very encouraging, said Mr Beg.

“The children are shrinking between 40,000 and 50,000 bottles per month,” he said. “The kids are fantastic ambassadors for recycling.”

Part of the interest generated is having to do with a specialised device used to shrink the used bottles to only a fraction of their original size. Invented in Hungary, where 600 schools are involved in a similar project, the device has generated interest among children and among visitors at the Al Ain Aerobatics Show. Horizon Technologies has a set up a stand promoting the devices.

“The device was developed by a Hungarian inventor and we secured the distribution rights for the UAE,” said Mr Beg.

The device uses heat to shrink a bottle to ten per cent of its size. The labels and caps are removed and reusable plastic is produced.

“It is a reverse form of the process we use to produce a bottle,” he said.

Horizon Technologies is planning on extending the scheme to schools in Fujairah soon.