Sharjah launches Tandeef cleaning service

BY PMA RASHEED

The Gulf Today, 11 Jan 2010

The emirate of Sharjah has launched a novel inner-city waste management system on Sunday, in order to provide an effective solution to the massive quantity of solid garbage generated by the nearly 1 million population of the emirate.

The quantity of solid waste generated daily by a Sharjah resident is estimated at an average of 2.8 kilogramme, revealed officials on the sidelines of a press conference to launch Tandeef, the new entity aimed at providing integrated waste management solutions to the emirate.

"Considering the total population of the emirate," the officials said, "the total amount of waste generated daily in Sharjah comes approximately 200,600 kilogramme."

Sultan Al Mulla, Director General of Sharjah Municipality (SM) said the operation of Tandeef begins in District 7 Al Majaz, as the district houses approximately 300,000 people of the city's total population.

"The operations will be gradually expanded to the city's remaining 13 districts over the next 12 to 15 months. Once all the sectors are being installed with the system, Tandeef will collect, transport, treat and recycle over 600,000 tonnes of non-hazardous municipal solid waste per year," he pointed out.

Salim Obaid Al Shamsi, Sharjah City Municipal Council Chairman, said, "Tandeef will take over the waste management services of Sharjah Municipality (SM), as being a division of the Sharjah Environment Company Bee'ah."

"The organisation has been established to specifically deliver a comprehensive, cost-effective, environmentally sound, and technically reliable solid waste collection and city beautification system," he added.

Shamsi explained that the activities of Tandeef include scheduled waste collections, public recycling and waste minimisation, community outreach and awareness, and public space vacuuming and sweeping.

Salim Bin Mohammed Al Owais, acting chairman of Bee'ah, said: "Tandeef will conduct education and awareness programmes for schools, social organisations, businesses and families to create shared understanding of the need for environmentally responsible activities."

"The public will also be educated on waste minimisation and landfill diversion, identifying roles that each group can play to support clean communities," he added.

Khaled Al Huraimel, general manager of Bee'ah, said, "By the end of the year 2010, about 1800 employees will be in place to work for Tandeef, and all of the communities in Sharjah will be able to benefit from the Tandeef cleaning practices."

"Operations of the organisation will be facilitated with international standard operating procedures (SOPs), occupational health and safety (OH&S) standards and the latest in personal protective equipments," he added.

George Yanos, Senior Manager of Waste Collection Equipment at Bee'ah, said the emirate will be witnessing a new range of innovative waste processing equipments within six months, with trucks having two compartments in which one will collect the waste, simultaneously the other will recycle the collected debris.

"The communities within all 14 sectors of the emirate will be serviced with the new fleet of purpose-specific functionality vehicles. The fleet ranges from refuse collection vehicles to line-haul long range transports, from large street sweepers to mini street sweepers and vacuuming machines," he added.

According to him, the operations will be conducted when traffic levels are low, empowered with GPS vehicle tracking and computerised route-optimisation system that will control the fleet to maximise their service efficiency and minimise environmental impact due to emissions.

Owais said that Tandeef also will be introducing additional recycling programmes soon to support the residential, commercial and pedestrian initiatives already in place in Sharjah.

According to Shamsi, the initiative will further boost the beautification efforts in Sharjah, providing a clean and healthy environment to communities with systems to control solid waste efficiently to close the loop between consumption and disposal.