Bee’ah Receives The Consul Of The Kingdom Of The Netherlands
Chairman and CEO of Bee’ah discuss Scope of Mutual Cooperation and Potential Joint Projects in Waste Management Technologies between Sharjah and the Netherlands
H.E. Salim Al Owais, Chairman of Bee’ah, received H.E. Stephan van de Wall, the Consul Head of the Economic Department and Mr. Joseph Ibrahim, Commercial Attache of the Economic Department at the Consulate-General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in the United Arab Emirates, at Bee’ah’s head offices in Sharjah. The meeting was set to discuss areas of collaboration & potential joint projects in waste management technologies between Sharjah and the Netherlands.
Accompanying the Chairman in greeting the Consul was Mr. Khaled Al Huraimel, CEO of Bee’ah. Al Owais expressed Bee’ah’s keen interest to look into the possible collaboration opportunities and exchange of know-how between Sharjah and the Kingdom of the Netherlands, as well as Bee’ah’s interest in implementing some of the best Dutch practices in waste management and environmental technologies.
The Dutch possess extensive knowledge and experience in recycling, stimulated by a population of over 16 million people living in the Kingdom, a lack of free grounds and a growing environmental awareness amongst its society which inspired the Dutch government to take measures to reduce the land filling of waste and invest significant government funding into recycling programmes.
The Consul explained that when the Netherlands first adopted recycling, they faced some challenges. Yet today the country takes a lot of pride in mastering the art of recycling and is reaching out to help countries that are now starting to make these types of investments and advising them on how to avoid potential obstacles.
The Kingdom today is able to recycle no less than 64% of its waste and most of the remainder is incinerated to generate energy. As a result, only a small percentage (1.8%) ends up in landfill. In the realm of recycling this is a shining and unique achievement. The Dutch approach is simple: avoid creating waste as much as possible, recover the valuable raw materials from it, generate energy by incinerating residual waste, and only then dump what is left over, but do so in an environmentally-friendly way. This approach – known as ’Lansink’s Ladder’ after the Member of the Dutch Parliament who proposed it – was incorporated into the Dutch legislation in 1994 and forms the basis of the ’waste hierarchy’ in the European Waste Framework Directive.
At the end of the meeting, the two parties agreed to form a joint-effort team that will focus on the development of a work plan to initiate the communication channels and investigate future potential environmental and recycling projects as well as a plan for a Bee’ah and Sharjah Municipality delegation study tour visit to the Netherlands.
