Portsmouth Business School

Thesis summary

The rapid, economic cultural and industrial development in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) following the discovery of oil together with the growth in population and increase in worker immigration has created many infrastructure problems. One such problem is municipal solid waste (MSW) management. Due to land availability and lack of modern wast management expertise, until recent years simple landfill has been adopted as a waste management strategy by most KSA cities. This was the case in Jeddah, one of the largest cities in KSA, which generated almost 2 million tonnes of MSW in 2004. In more recent years, the Government has begun to encourage recycling and in 2006 a limited materials recovery facility (MRF) was brought back on line, following earlier operational problems, in an attempt to meet a government recycling target of 25%. In January 2008 a new sanitary landfill site was opened in Jeddah and the old landfill site will be closed.

With increasing options for treatment waste, there has been a world-wide move to adopt the concept of Integrated Waste Management (IWM). A number of software models have been developed in an attempt to provide strategists and decision-makers with predictions of the environmental and economic consequences of various treatment strategies. One such model is IWM-2, which, despite its limitations, is particularly useful when data is limited as is the case in KSA. The IWM-2 model was used to investigate the MSW management system in the city of Jeddah and evaluate possible ways to achieve government targets for pollution reduction and recycling/materials recovery.

Data was collected using interviews with key government, municipality and waste industry personnel in Jeddah and waste management in Egypt. This included previously unpublished official statistics and reports were used to evaluate the existing MSW system, the new sanitary landfill approach and a range of possible recycling/recovery options capable of meeting the 25% target. Where possible, model default data was customized to reflect actual conditions and practices in Jeddah/KSA.

Analysis of the model outputs showed that a sanitary landfill could significantly lower both environmental burdens and economic cost compared to the existing landfill system. However, these environmental savings would be reduced and the economic savings lost if energy is not recovered from the collected landfill gas, as is the case, with the newly opened Jeddah site.

A range of recovery/recycling treatment were evaluated, although no forms of incineration or conversion to fuel were considered as this is not permitted in KSA. Composting of organic materials yields environmental savings but these must be offset against costs since the model predicts that the costs of seperation and processing co-mingled waste are greater than any sales revenue from compost. Increasing the range of materials recovered produces significant savings in environmental burdens and theoretically enables the MSW system to almost break even on costs.

Because of the limitations of the data there are incertainties in the model outputs and therefore sensitivity analysis (SA) was undertaken on six key parameters. One of these, leachare volume, produced the unusual result that air emissions were independent of leachate volume.

Based on the evaluation and SA and additional data on energy consumption in MRF and biological processes, a potential strategy (J7ISWM) for Jeddah is proposed. It aims for 29% recovery of total MSW using source seperation and no energy recovery and is predicted to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 68% and net cost by more than 95% compared to the current system. Source seperation, an accepted method for improving recycling efficiency and quality of materials, has however not previously been attempted in KSA. The current capacity of the Jeddah MRF is only capable yielding about 8.5% recovery on the 2004 MSW total. Even with a planned increase from 500 to 1200 tonnes/day in the 2-3 years, at the projected rate of MSW growth, this will still only yield between 16-17% of MSW - well below the Government target.

Source seperation, an accepted method for improving recycling efficiency and quality of materials, has however not previously been attempted in KSA. The successful implementation of source seperation will necessitate education and raising of environmental awareness of both public and business. It is possible that source seperation introduction could enable the MRF to increase output. A longer-term strategy of opening up investment to encourage the construction of additional MRF has been proposed.

The social acceptability as the third element of sustainable waste management was not addressed.

The thesis is the first attempt to evaluate the application of software models such as IWM-2 in KSA and therefore will contribute to increasing the knowledge of IWM in Arab society in general and KSA in particular. In addition the study has identified a number of possible future research topics in waste mnagement which will enrich the theoretical through the application of the practical.