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Municipality Of Abu Dhabi City Takes Part In Paper Less Day |
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The Municipality of Abu Dhabi City today celebrated "Paper Less Day" through staging an educative campaign and introductory presentations attended by staff of the Municipality in the context of its continued efforts to conserve the environment and protect the nature in keeping with its social responsibility. Through taking part in this campaign, the Municipality of Abu Dhabi City is seeking to educate its employees and customers on the importance of reducing paper consumption, converting offices into environment-friendly locations, curbing emission of greenhouse gases resulting from the excessive use of paper, advocating a gradual transition from ’raising awareness’ phase to orienting the conduct of employees with the aim of bringing about a positive change in their attitudes towards the concept of rationalizing paper consumption. Previously, the Municipality launched several initiatives and projects to conserve the environment and achieve sustainable development such as recycling of paper, plastic and metal wastes project which have now totalled 26,750 kgs of paper, plastic and metal waste used in the buildings of the Municipality, the project of reducing the Municipality’s consumption of paper ’&’ environment-harming materials, and the project of using reusable and eco-friendly materials and tools. The Municipality’s participation in Paperless Day included a workshop attended by a large portion of employees comprising seminars and lectures along with a presentation about paper industry, the impact of using paper on the environment, and the need to encourage employees to reduce paper consumption as much as possible unless it is extremely necessary. Engineer Salah Awad Al Sarraj, Acting Executive Director of Town Planning Sector, said: "Participation in the campaign stems from the Municipality’s values to conserve the environment and nature, and its commitment towards future generations through setting an example to be emulated in making utmost efforts to improve the quality and standard of living in Abu Dhabi city. The process of recycling paper, plastic and metal at the main buildings of the Municipality has been completed through providing custom-made containers at various locations to facilitate the sorting of waste, and the Municipality has also contracted with a specialized agency to recycle these wastes in an environment-friendly manner". "Over the next phase of this initiative, the Municipality of Abu Dhabi City will work on establishing a database to identify the quantity and type of waste produced at buildings of the Municipality so as to monitor the change in the volume of this wastage. It will also step up the awareness campaigns targeting employees and visitors to enlighten them on the importance of conserving the environment through stressing the need to sort and recycle wastes, and contributing effectively to boosting the culture of using electronic means of correspondence while placing special emphasis on using environment-friendly and reusable materials" he pointed out. "The initiatives of Abu Dhabi Municipality City proved successful judging by the initial statistics which show that recycled wastage in March and April comprising paper, carton, newspapers and magazines, totalled about 26,000 kgs, which equals to saving 428 trees by the Municipality through reusing of paper only. About 1400 kgs of plastic materials and 182 kgs of metal cans have also been recycled, bringing the total of recycled materials to 26,750 kgs of waste" he added. It is noteworthy that Paperless Campaign was rolled out by Environment Agency - Abu Dhabi "EAD" in collaboration with Abu Dhabi Gas Liquefaction Company Ltd. "ADGAS" to commemorate World Environment Day under the theme "CO2: Kick the Habit". In 2009 Environment Agency - Abu Dhabi decided to take things a notch higher by broadening the initiative to include more organizations and agencies with the aim of stopping unnecessary paper printing and copying a their offices and raising the awareness of their employees of the possibility to work with less amount of paper. |
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