Introduction
Waste management is an important part of managing an economy and this applies to every country, including Qatar. Trash or garbage can be collected from residential, commercial, and industrial buildings. Basically, every business and lifestyle operations that occur within a city or a state leads to the creation of garbage. Over time, the garbage that are produced as a result of basic residential, commercial, and industrial activities could lead to the accumulation of garbage on traditional garbage storage spaces (e.g. landfills), and garbage incinerators (which by the way could present as a potent environmental risk). If these garbage-containing strategies would be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of garbage produced by human activities, then things could get even uglier, especially for highly dense and urbanized countries. Lumps of trash and garbage could be easily seen on the streets and in other places where they are not supposed to be seen. This is why some government and non-government organizations still continue to look for ways to maximize the effects of traditional waste disposal and management strategies. In Qatar, there have been new issues on waste management and recycling that has been set by the Ministry of Environment . Indeed, what if the solution to all these present and future problems about waste disposal and management is already right in front of us? Recycling is a waste management strategy that continues to show promise.
In this paper, the author will discuss whether it would be beneficial for a country like Qatar to turn into recycling for them to effectively manage their waste management woes, and if in case it would, whether the country’s government should start to actually ramp up efforts to integrate it with its current waste management strategies.
What Recycling is
Recycling is a process wherein waste materials, or materials that would normally take up significant space on landfills and consume significant amounts of energy just to incinerate, are turned into new (although recycled) but potentially useful and functional materials. Some of the main goals of recycling include but may not be limited to the reduction on energy used in garbage incineration; reduction in air pollution again from incineration; reduction in water pollution (often caused by excessive reliance on landfills); reduction on greenhouse gas emissions; reduction on the consumption of fresh raw materials; and to increase society’s awareness about responsible industrialization and urbanization, and most importantly, responsible waste management.
Benefits of Recycling
There are many practical and in fact, obvious advantages of recycling over other waste management strategies such as the deposition of trash and garbage on landfills and the use of huge amounts of energy and the deposition of also huge amounts of harmful greenhouse gases, both of which are the actual results of garbage incinerating—basically burning garbage regardless of what materials they are made of into ashes for easier disposal. Some of the benefits of recycling include but may not be limited to the following.
One practical advantage of recycling is that it significantly reduces the volume of garbage sent to landfills. Without any other way to reduce reliance on landfills and garbage incineration, the entire waste management system can be busted. In the 1980s, for example, the United States government has reported peak landfill usage levels wherein Americans sent a whopping 150 million tons of garbage every year. Today, despite sharp and continuous increase in population, people in the United States have managed to reduce that amount to 100 million tons a year, thanks to waste management alternatives such as recycling, among others.
There is really no reason why a country like Qatar could not do so well a job in that aspect of waste management, especially considering the fact that it is a much smaller country than the U.S. with a much less population whose wastes need to take care of. Air pollution from landfills and water pollution caused by landfill leachates may also be reduced in recycling. Landfill leachates and the air that passes through a landfill create huge amounts of pollution. In the case of landfill leachates, for example, as assorted compounds coming from a complex combination of garbage break down and get mixed up with that of others, it creates a toxic soup known as leachate. What is not so surprising about how leachates could create pollution is the fact that they could easily break out of the landfill areas and contaminate aquifers and other groundwater supplies. With recycling, all these risks are lessened.
Some Recent Advances in Recycling, a Possible Solution to the Modern Waste Management Problems
Researchers from the Texas A&M in Qatar have come up with a new way to ramp up the nation’s recycling efforts. This strategy, once proven, can of course be adopted by other countries who also face the same waste management problem such as Qatar. Well, as much as every country in this planet face their own waste management problem so at this point, it may be safe to say that this new found technology can be used by almost everyone to gap up their recycling efforts.
What the researchers from these two universities have invented is a solar powered smart trash can that mimics the way how most recycling centers work, but on a miniature scale. The process of recycling often involves sorting the garbage materials based on their composition and compacting or compressing them so that they would occupy considerably less amounts of space. Well, this is exactly what the smart trashcan does, plus additional high technology features. It has holes of different sizes so that the person throwing the thrash would be forced to throw his trash where it is supposed to be. Suppose that trash is a soda can. He would be forced to throw it in the soda trash can because that is the only place where it would fit because trash cans for papers and other materials have different mouth shapes. The smart trash can also uses power from the sun to compress the garbage it has collected and save as much as five times of space compared to conventional trash cans . Lastly and perhaps its most beneficial feature is that once it is already full, it sends a wireless signal to the company operating it that it is ready for collection, saving the company, and eventually the government the time and resources to check each trash can’s storage capacity every day. With the smart trash can technology, they do not have to do that anymore because it would already be part of the job of the trash cans to inform them. The downside to this, however, is the price, because each smart trash can costs 8,000 USD a piece but manufacturers and researchers say that the can could make up for the initial costs of procuring it in as early as two years.
Conclusions: Why Qatar Should Start Recycling its Wastes
Qatar is a small country that is comprised of high-income people. Additionally, it is the world’s richest country in terms of per capital GDP, thanks to the vast amounts of oil and natural gas in its reserves. Nonetheless, there are only a little over 1.8 million people inside the country. Therefore, it can be asserted that its waste management problems are not as serious or large scale compared to that of other bigger countries such as China and the United States. Nonetheless, the country will have to face the fact that there will eventually come a time wherein they will have to face those problems or risk losing their streak on progressive economic development. By starting to be engaged in nationwide recycling efforts as early as now, the country would be more prepared to fight larger scale battles against the accumulation of waste in the future. In 2012, as part of the country’s environmental initiative, the government has set a goal to quadruple its recycling rates over the next four years . If the government would start as early as now and continue their past efforts in recycling and waste management, the costs would be much less and in the future , they would not need to make more radical decisions because basically, they have already prepared for that problem a long time before their manifestations even surfaced. The monarch of Qatar can start to introduce the use of smart trash cans. Some researchers believe that inventions like the smart trashcan could be the key to the future of recycling. For a progressive country like Qatar, this could very well be the case. On the one hand, the government may also be discouraged to introduce the use of the smart trash can developed by the researchers from the Texas A&M University because of its high price tag. Surely, if its use would be introduced in Qatar, the initial payout would be huge especially when we compare the price of a single unit of a smart trash can to that of a conventional trash can .
References
Doha News Team. (2012). Ministry of Environment to Issue Rules on Recycling, Waste Management in Qatar. Doha News.
Doha News Team. (2013). Official: New, sorely needed recycling policies in Qatar Afoot. Doha News.
Martin, F. (2013). UH Hopes New Trash Compactors Will Save Money, Environment. KUHF News for Houston.
Ozerkan, G. (n.d.). Recycling Plastic in Qatar. Academia.edu.
Qureshi, T. (2012). Qatar Quadruples Recycling Rates as Part of Green Vision. Doha 2012 Ultimate Change Conference.
