The fourth and final phase of the solid waste sorting programme covers all governmental and semi-governmental buildings, central Doha, the Doha Corniche and all stadiums and sports facilities.
The Ministry of Municipality on Thursday held an introductory meeting on the implementation of the fourth and final phase in the presence of a number of officials and stakeholders from municipalities, administrations of different entities and representatives of cleaning companies, the official Qatar News Agency (QNA) reported.
Public Cleanliness Department director Moqbel Madhaour al-Shammari stressed the importance of internal sorting of waste (inside buildings), and to ensure that it is done correctly according to the two-bin system. The first container is for solid recyclable waste, while the second is for organic waste (food residues). External sorting, too, has to be implemented with 100% accuracy to achieve the desired goal of the sorting process.
During the meeting, al-Shammari gave a presentation on the fourth phase of the solid waste sorting programme at the source. He explained that this stage comes as a continuation of the previous three stages, which included schools, kindergartens, health centres, banks, financial institutions, commercial complexes, malls, universities, public parks and hotels, as well as the launch of an electronic service – ‘The nearest recycling container to my house’.
Al-Shammari pointed out that the solid waste sorting programme aims to contribute to achieving Qatar National Vision 2030 by “reducing the amount of waste, managing the environment in a way that ensures harmony and consistency between economic and social development and environmental protection, preserving the integrity of the environment, preserving natural resources for future generations and the use of recyclable materials so that the demand for raw materials decreases, as well as supporting the private sector by providing them with recyclable materials”, according to QNA.
He added that the programme is based on co-ordination with the target parties to provide a suitable container (inner container) for sorting recyclable materials (paper, plastic, aluminum, glass), and blue external containers of different sizes to collect recyclable materials and unload them in vehicles designated for transporting such materials to a waste treatment centre of the recycling and treatment Department.
The General Cleanliness Department will initially provide containers for collecting recyclable materials for buildings of the Ministry of Municipality.
For his part, assistant director of the Waste Recycling and Treatment Department Hassan Nasr al-Nasr said the four stations of the department receive all of the ministry’s vehicles. In order to encourage companies that work to establish a waste sorting system within their projects and contracts by defining two types of waste and two paths for recycling waste, the transfer stations will receive vehicles for transporting waste that have been sorted by them, according to the scope of work of each company and the nearest transfer station, he added.
The stations receive waste seven days a week, 24 hours a day.
Recently, the the Ministry of Municipality had said municipalities in Qatar will take strict action - from October - against entities that fail to segregate solid waste in the proper manner, as envisaged in the decision taken earlier in this regard.