Dr. Sami Al-Ghamdi & Dr. Furqan Tahir
The State of Qatar held its second Waste Management Conference and Exhibition 2022 last week (June 13-14). The agenda included presentations and panel discussions on the concept of a circular economy for a sustainable solid waste management system. To reach Qatar’s strategic goal of developing a circular economy, the Ministry of Municipality, HE Dr. Abdullah bin Abdulaziz bin Turki Al Subaie, announced the Ministry’s plan to build a new waste management center to treat over 2,000 tons of waste and produce electricity.
The concept of circular economy is a model aimed at the production and consumption of products that ideally create no waste; this means materials and products in the production and consumption systems are shared, leased, reused, repaired, refurbished, and recycled, if possible. This concept, aimed at increasing resource efficiency, using closed-loop technologies, is gaining popularity worldwide. However, the circular economy closed-loop concept does not guarantee environmental benefits.
In our opinion, to ensure that the circular economy model includes environmental, economic, and social sustainability, it must be used in conjunction with life cycle assessment.
Life cycle assessment is a systematic analysis of environmental aspects and potential environmental impacts of any product or process throughout its life cycle, starting from raw material extraction to final disposal or recycling. It is a key tool used in evaluating consumption of power and energy, water, and other resources, including the emission of toxic gases into the air, removal of industrial wastes, and other harmful effects because of several industrial manufacturing processes.
To illustrate, petrochemicals are a leading industry within industrial zones worldwide, producing a vast range of products such as plastics, pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, and textile products that are financially lucrative for countries. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries have emerged as global exporters of petrochemical products, including chemicals, consumer care products, pharmaceuticals, automobiles, textiles, and agricultural products.
In fact, the GCC polymer industry produced 22 exclusive products in 2016, doubling the number of products the GCC region produced in 2005. Although this has led to a growing demand for plastic production, and is financially lucrative, it has also led to growing concern in the region over the environmental impact, including environmental hazards, associated with plastic waste.
Unfortunately, there is lack of research focusing on the region’s optimization of the plastic production processes, using a circular economy and life cycle thinking approach. Our Sustainable Built Environment (SBE) research group at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), is attempting to fill this crucial gap. We are engaged in analyzing and evaluating plastic production and how it can be made greener and more efficient with low environmental impact and waste for sustainable development. In one of our studies, we evaluated different polymer-based sanitation pipes. We discovered that various materials consumed different amounts of energy as well as emitted different amounts of carbon, showing that material selection is an especially important aspect in lowering overall environmental impacts. We also discovered that recycled materials have enormous potential, with the ability to cut environmental impacts by more than half.
Our SBE research group has also studied a large-scale plant’s environmental impacts of polypropylene production, using life-cycle assessment. For recycling and minimizing waste purposes, several options were examined. We determined that landfilling of plastic waste had the greatest environmental impact, while gasification and pyrolysis proved to have less environmental impact than recycling and incineration. Our study can be used as a benchmark and guide for the GCC petrochemical industrial sector to make changes to their production processes, especially in the feed purification and reaction stages, as improvements in these two phases will have the highest impact to overcoming the undesirable environmental effects associated with the production process.
The 2nd Waste Management Conference and Exhibition 2022 demonstrates the GCC’s commitment to addressing waste management in the region, highlighting the latest methods, raising awareness, and encouraging investment. Organizing this conference annually will allow all major industries, including the petrochemical industry, to learn about novel technologies and methods as well as best practices that can improve their respective industry. Although the GCC petrochemical industry plays a crucial role in the region’s economic development, providing significant employment opportunities, an improved lifestyle, and a demand surplus for other economic activities and industries, our research suggests the need to prioritize the following actions:
For more information or questions regarding the research of the SBE research group, please contact Dr. Sami G. Al-Ghamdi, PhD, Associate Professor, Sustainable Development Division, College of Science & Engineering, Hamad Bin Khalifa University (Email: [email protected])
