A look at the process

Details of paper, can, glass and plastic recycling
Environmental enthusiasts at homes and offices across Dubai sort paper, cans, plastics and aluminium and deposit them at various collection points in the city in an effort to play their part in the recycling programme. So what happens to these materials once they are deposited in the bins and how are these materials actually recycled?

The majority of the companies collecting this waste are actually waste management companies who send the collected materials to countries outside the UAE for recycling. However, a smaller number of Dubai-based units, who engage in recycling of materials, revealed some interesting facts about the process.

Recycling paper requires careful sorting of the used paper and care is taken to remove any staples and plastic wrapping strips. Paper is sorted into newsprint, computer paper and magazines that are glossy and have a lot of special inks.

The ink is removed by soaking the used paper, shredding it into tiny pieces and applying various chemicals to loosen the various ink types. To the wet shredded mixture, a number of additives are added to produce the desired type of paper. Bleach is added if a white paper is desired while rags are added to produce a fine and expensive type of paper.

This liquid mixture is then passed through a heavy roller that squeezes out the water. It is dried by pressing or by placing in furnaces, polished to give the desired finish and then cut into sheets or rolls depending on the requirement.

In Dubai, Union Paper Mills produces paper by recycling corrugated cardboard, while Oasis Paper Industries produces paper from left-over scraps of cloth or rags found at the Sharjah and Ajman garment factories.

"We produce 204 qualities of paper ranging from silk paper to metallic paper cut into different sizes. We can also cut it into A4 size sheets if we receive a minimum order of 1,000 sheets. Watching rags turn into paper is really amazing!" exclaims Ashfaq Mirza, production in-charge, Oasis Paper Industries.

Aluminium cans are collected and dispatched to aluminium companies for melting. Lucky Corporation is one such company in Dubai that regularly recycles used cans. At their facility, the crushed cans are first shredded and then their coating and outside branding and images are burned off.

The shreds are then loaded into a furnace where it is mixed with pure aluminium metal. The resulting mixture is poured into moulds to make thick slabs of ingot.

For Lucky Corporation, the process ends here, as they sell the pure aluminium ingots to various companies. These ingots could be used in the construction industry or, in special cases, to make the actual cans.

The can manufacturers roll the purchased ingots through machines to reduce the thickness of the metal to make thin sheets called coils from which the bodies of the cans are fashioned.

Glass has to go through a sorting process before the recycling process. "Did you know that green glass bottles can only be recycled into green colour and that flint or clear makes flint glass?" asks K. Hari of the Tajer Glass factory in Dubai. His company uses used glass bottles and jars in the glass manufacturing process.

Once the glass is sorted according to colour, it is cleaned and prepared for the furnace. The glass is crushed, put through magnets to remove metal pieces and is filtered to remove any plastics. The pure glass bits, called cullet, are put into the furnace and mixed with pure ingredients to make reflectors or beads on the roads or to make new glass.

Though all types of plastics can be recycled, three main types of plastics called PET (polyethylene terephthalate), which is plastic used to make mineral water bottles; HPDE (High density polyethylene) which is used to make shopping bags, milk and juice cans; and Vinyl, a hard rigid plastic that makes pipes and fittings, are the most economical to put through this process.

Once the plastic is sorted according to type, it also has to be sorted according to colour. It is cleaned and the large contaminants are manually removed. The plastics are ground and then washed to remove further contaminants. The material is dried, formed into powder and is then ready for remaking into new plastic products.

Dubai-based Eco Plastics Industries claims that with its recycling and re-using of plastic, it is able to stop 15 tonnes per day of plastic from littering the sea and countryside of Dubai.

The facilities put in a heroic effort to save the environment but it will only work as long as we take the first step by organising our waste and transporting it to the various collection points available in the city. The difference we can make to the recycling effort is far greater than we sometimes think it is.