Ajman must resort to building a landfill and spending millions on an incineration plant as part of its efforts to cope with the mountains of waste generated by its residents, a Government official said yesterday.
The emirate is moving ahead with plans to open the landfill - its first. And during an address to an audience of experts yesterday at the Middle East Waste Summit 2010, Yaser Kayed, the head of environmental protection at Ajman Municipality, filled in details on a plan to burn its waste and turn at least some of it into energy.
The landfill will be built next to the incinerator, filling in a major gap for the emirate, which currently ships its waste to Sharjah.
"At the moment we do not have a sanitary landfill," he said. The incinerator, estimated to cost Dh200 million (US$54m), will be capable of burning 500 tonnes of waste per day.
Mr Kayed said the decision to proceed with an incinerator was made after a study showed the amount of waste produced in the emirate was to grow rapidly.
Ajman's 230,000 residents, as well as industry, hospital and construction sites, generate almost 160,000 tonnes of solid waste per year. The amount is to grow to 541,873 tonnes in 2013 and more than two million tonnes in 2030, Mr Kayed said.
Although the figures do not account for a reduction expected because of the current economic crisis, the overall trend is still up, he said.
The incinerator will be capable of producing 15 megawatts of electricity.
"We have to go for a waste-to-energy plant to reduce the amounts of waste to the levels we need," he said.
Incinerators are controversial methods of dealing with waste because of the harmful emissions released as waste is burned.
The most controversial are dioxins, which have been linked to cancer. Dubai has also chosen incineration to deal with its waste problems and work is progressing on finding a private company to build a facility for the emirate. However, incineration is considered a better alternative than dumping waste at landfills, which is how the UAE deals with most of its waste.
A study released at the waste summit found that the UAE generated 22 per cent of the 22.2 million tonnes produced in Gulf countries last year, coming in second only to Saudi Arabia.
In Sharjah, despite efforts to recycle, waste is still piling up in the main landfill, said Jeremy Byatt, the director for environmental responsibility at Bee'ah, the company charged with overseeing the emirate's environmental affairs.
"Sharjah's landfill is growing with the equivalent of a football field of garbage, 60 centimetres thick, every day," said Mr Byatt. "This is unsustainable."
Like many emirates, Ajman is taking steps to process some household waste so that recyclable materials such as plastics, paper and metal are retrieved. Around 100 tonnes of plastic and up to 80 tonnes of metal are retrieved every month. But since the rubbish that reaches that treatment facility is mixed, it is hard to retrieve large amounts, Mr Kayed said.
Next month, Ajman will see its first rubbish bins allowing for the separate collection of recyclable materials. The bins will be installed at three locations in the central part of Ajman city in co-operation with Bee'ah.
In June, Ajman will also begin enforcing a ban on the use of shopping and garbage bags made of normal plastic.
Only bags with additives that allow the plastic to break down easily will be allowed into the emirate.
The rules will also apply to plastic manufacturing within Ajman, Mr Kayed said.
Last month the emirate ordered 12 oil and petrochemical plants without private waste-management systems to cease operations.
Sixteen companies vying to build the Ajman incinerator have been narrowed to three; the final candidate will also run the facility, turning it over to the Government after 20 years.
@Email:vtodorova@thenational.ae
Kanguva
Director: Siva
Stars: Suriya, Bobby Deol, Disha Patani, Yogi Babu, Redin Kingsley
Best Foreign Language Film nominees
Capernaum (Lebanon)
Cold War (Poland)
Never Look Away (Germany)
Roma (Mexico)
Shoplifters (Japan)
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Qyubic
Started: October 2023
Founder: Namrata Raina
Based: Dubai
Sector: E-commerce
Current number of staff: 10
Investment stage: Pre-seed
Initial investment: Undisclosed
