Five Municipal Council members submitted a proposal to designate a site for a material recovery facility (MRF) to recycle materials. The members who submitted the proposal are M. Alia Al-Farsi, M. Sharifa Al-Shalfan , M. Farah Al-Roumi , Abdul Latif Al-Daei and M. Ismail Behbehani. The proposal specified that waste dumps in Kuwait negatively affect the environment and public health, especially land waste due to the difficulty of their rehabilitation.
According to Al-Anbaa, the council members have said that the Environmental Protection Law prohibits the establishment of new landfills or the expansion of existing ones without the approval of the Supreme Council for the Environment. The law also requires concerned authorities to complete the infrastructure for solid waste recycling works within five years. This period has now ended, and in order to comply with the law, different solutions are needed for the recycling of municipal solid waste.
The council added that the municipality does not currently require sorting of waste at the source. The new hygiene regulations are still being studied, and it is not clear when they will be implemented. In order to comply with the law and reduce the impact of waste on the environment, they believe that parallel ways should be worked on to achieve sorting of waste and recycling. Moreover, the council also believes that this type of project reduces the amount of waste sent to landfills, benefits from waste and facilitates its recycling, reduces carbon emissions, and develops flexible and easy-to-apply solutions to deal with municipal solid waste.
In addition, the council suggests allocating one or more sites within the municipality’s landfill areas to establish the MRF-Material Recovery Facility for recycling. They explained that the technical requirements and safety standards for the proposed waste recycling facility will be comprehensive, covering all aspects of the facility’s operation. These standards will ensure that the facility is only receiving waste that can be recycled, that the waste is sorted and processed in an environmentally sound manner, and that any unwanted materials are disposed of safely, while limiting manual sorting to landfills except in facilities or factories designated for them. This step is done in coordination with other parties to verify and measure the project’s success.
