Medhat Ismail, the head of the Middle East and Africa (MEA) at Geocycle. The world generates around two billion tonnes of municipal solid waste annually, making waste management a major headache for both industrialised and developing countries.
Co-processing is a globally recognised sustainable technology through which waste is used as a source of energy to replace fossil fuels such as coal, petroleum and gas in energy-intensive industries like cement making. Geocycle, owned by Bamburi Cement’s parent company, Holcim Group, has been spearheading co-processing initiatives. Financial Standard spoke to Medhat Ismail, the head of the Middle East and Africa (MEA) at Geocycle, during his tour of Kenya recently on this and more. Waste management is becoming a crisis globally. How serious is the problem?
According to the World Bank, global waste is expected to grow to around 3.4 billion tonnes by 2050, from the current two billion tonnes of solid waste annually . Currently, at least 30 per cent of this waste is not managed in an environmentally safe manner.
More than 90 per cent of waste in sub-Saharan Africa goes to open dumpsites and landfills due to the absence of adequate waste disposal and treatment solutions. Waste management and recycling solutions, therefore, have to be accelerated to match the increase of waste.
What are the latest techniques and technologies being deployed to deal with the waste management problem?
Waste-to-energy solutions are the main trends currently. This entails either generating electricity from waste or co-processing waste as alternative fuels for heavy energy industries such as the cement and steel industries.
At Geocycle, we apply the co-processing technology in cement kilns, which is a scientific, proven and established technology for disposing of hazardous and other non-recyclable waste in an environmentally sustainable way. As a result, 100 per cent of the waste input is recycled without leaving any additional residue. Due to its advantages in terms of complete destruction of waste and no residue leftover, cement kilns stand out from the different methods of waste disposal like incineration, waste to energy and landfilling.
What key initiatives are you undertaking in Kenya?
We have a number of partnerships with different industries on safe waste disposal. This includes a partnership with oil marketers through a Safe Waste Oil Disposal (SWOD) programme with the Petroleum Institute of East Africa (PIEA), where Bamburi Cement supports them to safely dispose of their waste oil safely.
Other waste disposal partnerships are with logistics companies […]
