First Ever Refuse-Derived Fuel Factory in Egypt to Begin Operations Next Week
With each passing year, Egyptians alone produce 20 million tonnes of waste. To put this astronomical number into perspective, it is the same as weighing together 143 blue whales; the largest animal that’s known to have ever existed. That is not by any means an acceptable number.
Now, imagine that most of this waste is either burned, dumped in the Nile, or left on the streets; a bleak image indeed, yet in many parts of Egypt as well as the Arab World, that is the norm. However, the Ministry of Environment is set to make use of this waste without polluting the environment by building the first refuse-derived fuel factory in Egypt.
The Egyptian Minister of the Environment, Yasmin Fouad, has announced that the factory is to be inaugurated on Thursday, the 18th of April, in a push towards cleaner and greener Egypt. According to a report by Youm7, the factory is equipped with the latest technology of waste recycling.
Without such practices, the colossal amount of wastes Egyptians produce will pollute our environment to a point of no return, causing the disappearance of many of Egypt’s unique animals and plants. The Suez-based factory is set to treat up to one thousand tonnes of waste every single day, including solid waste, industrial waste, as well as organic waste.
For those of you not aware of the refuse-derived fuel technology, it is a method for producing fuel from various types of wastes. The fuel produced can be used as an alternative to fossil fuels, which are damaging to the environment.
The factory comes as a part of Egypt’s plan to move away from primarily relying on coal for energy and complements other projects such as the opening of Qalyubia’s first waste-recycling plant; which can convert 4,000 tonnes waste per day into clean energy. Other projects include the Egyptian-Korean agreement that’ll inaugurate several waste-recycling plants, and finally, the construction of Egypt’s El-Dab’a Nuclear Plant, the first nuclear reactor for the generation of energy in the Arab World.
