Bee’ah’s End-Of-Life Vehicle Recycling Solution

One of the world’s largest landfills resides in Al Saj’ah, Sharjah, where it spans an area equivalent to 525 football fields. It is operated by Bee’ah, a leading provider of integrated environmental and waste management solutions. The size of the landfill echoes the scope of Bee’ah’s ambition. The company was founded to transform Sharjah into the environmental capital of the Middle East: the first Arab city to reach 70% diversion of waste away from landfill through recycling and conversion, and an ecological model to emulate in the rest of the region. An important way the company is working towards that ambition is by recycling automobiles that have reached the end of their life-cycle. Among Bee’ah’s facilities is the world’s most powerful machine for shredding cars and scrap metal. Known as the ‘Red Giant’ – an appropriate moniker, given its 44 tonne mass – it has the capacity to process very large volumes of tough materials rapidly and efficiently That means it makes quick work of car bodies – but much more besides. The ‘Red Giant’ is equally adept at recycling a wide range of materials which include waste wood, rootstocks, industrial waste, domestic and bulky waste, mixed scrap, white goods and engine blocks. Its tracks give it the mobility to comfortably move around Bee’ah’s facility, optimising its efficacy. Why is vehicle recycling important? The intuitive answer is that the process conserves our planet’s natural resources – resources that, but for the reuse of old materials, would otherwise be expended in the manufacture of new cars. That is clearly an important reason. But, perhaps less obviously, auto recycling is also vital because it significantly reduces the air and water pollution, and the waste generation, that is a by-product of the manufacture of new cars. With global warming and climate change being an urgent challenge on the international agenda, this is much more than a local or regional imperative: it is a global one. On an economical level, meanwhile, recycling cars reduces costs and returns materials into the economic cycle – which is beneficial both to individuals and to businesses. Statistics from Bee’ah released last year found that around 11,000 vehicles reach the end of their lives each month. Bee’ah’s car shredding and recycling facility isolates and reclaims the materials essential to the manufacturing process: metals, glass, plastics and wood. From start to finish it will typically process a vehicle in less than a minute – or a rate of about 60 cars per hour. Some of the parts processed will be renovated and reused; others are dropped into shredding machines, separated, and resold to buyers such as factories. Bee’ah is in the process of establishing agreements with international certified car part remanufacturing facilities, based in the US and Europe, to enable these recycled parts to be remanufactured to meet the original manufacturers’ specifications. Moreover, shredded steal, car interior foam and textiles, aluminium and steel rims, and copper wire can all be refreshed for a wide variety of purposes. Opened early in 2014, Bee’ah’s car recycling facility – the first of its kind in the UAE – is a relatively new addition to the company’s waste management services. Already well-established at that time was Bee’ah’s tyre recycling facility (TRF), which uses state of the art cryogenic processes to recycle used tyres. The TRF harnesses the power of liquid nitrogen to freeze tyres to minus 196 degrees Celsius, and convert them into various types of crumb rubber for different applications, such as running tracks. At full capacity it processes some 200,000 tyres per month – producing 500 tonnes of crumb rubber. Just over a thousand of these recycled tyres are needed to produce a single lane driving service one kilometre long. Of course, the recycling of cars and tyres are only one part – albeit an important one – of a wider ecological story. To transform Sharjah into the environmental capital of the Middle East, Bee’ah’s services span the spectrum of ecological sustainability, from waste management to renewable energy and the protection of the quality of the emirate’s air and water. The company’s waste collection division, Tandeef, is made up of a team of 2,000 people operating a fleet of 550 waste collection vehicles, almost 600 litter pickers, and seven cleaning boats. Among its offerings are street cleaning and sweeping, commercial waste collection, and recycling – in residential areas, public places, and offices and schools. Technology is playing an increasingly important role in the provision of these services. Bee’ah prides itself as being at the forefront of the region’s environmental innovation. Sharjah will become the first city in the Middle East to roll out Smart Wi-Fi Bins, designed by BigBelly, a leading provider of bin solutions in the US. Powered by solar panels, the bins are able to collect five times more trash than conventional alternatives before needing to be emptied, and are equipped with sensors to communicate their status to the Bee’ah control room. As Khaled Al Huraimel, Group CEO of Bee’ah, said at the launch of the new initiative: “How we manage waste is one of the most important challenges of our time. Smart solar-powered technology can change our lives”. Tandeef has also recently introduced a new Smart Eco-fleet, which encompasses sustainable, low noise electric vehicles – a first in UAE waste management – and vehicles that use Compressed Natural Gas to reduce the negative impact of carbon dioxide emissions. In the domain of renewable energy, Bee’ah also has lofty aspirations for Sharjah, building the world’s largest – and the region’s first ever – Waste-to-Energy facility. This revolutionary plant will be capable of processing 400,000 tonnes of otherwise non-recyclable waste, generating some 35MW of green energy. As well as its size, what makes the facility distinctive is its use of landfill space which is otherwise typically seen as contaminated land – turning conventionally unusable land space into a powerful source of clean energy. With the abundance of sunlight in the UAE, Bee’ah perceives solar energy to be a renewable resource which is potentially more promising than any other. As such, the facility will be the first step in a number of phases in Bee’ah’s solar energy pipeline – to be rolled out both locally and internationally. As has already been noted in this article, one of the great advantages of recycling cars at the end of their lives is the ensuing reduction of pollutants released into the air and water. Moving its focus beyond just waste management, Bee’ah has been taking confident steps forward into new areas, based upon a holistic view of the environment which recognises that the spheres of water, air, energy and waste are all interrelated, and should not be crudely separated from each other. This multitude of initiatives is gaining widespread recognition. Following a very competitive tendering process, Bee’ah has been awarded a five-year waste management contract for the iconic Burj Khalifa – the tallest building in the world – to introduce recycling logistics, create sustainability awareness amongst tenants and residents, and provide integrated waste management services. In recent months the company has landed similar contracts for clients including TECOM Media City, Knowledge Village, Academic City and Internet City. Bee’ah has also received multiple accolades from the prestigious Facilities Management Middle East Awards – including being named the Best Waste Management Company for five consecutive years, from 2011 to 2015. This year the company’s ICT department was also lauded for its innovation at the influential CIO 100 Awards – which recognises enterprises that generate higher revenues, build better business processes, and foster higher quality collaboration with their customers. In the mission to secure environmental sustainability, a vital piece of the puzzle is education. Over the past few years, the Bee’ah School of Environment (BSOE) has emerged as the region’s leading environmental education programme. Encompassing a comprehensive, bilingual program, it aims to empower teachers with environmental teaching tools, and to educate students, both though theory and real-world practices, to contribute to a greener, cleaner future. At the core of its classes and activities are the three Rs: reduce, reuse, and recycle. One notable annual initiative by the BSOE is the Sharjah Environment Awareness Award (SEAA), which engages students to think innovatively about sustainability and originate new ideas. This year, more than 350 schools in total were involved in the competition, encompassing over 200,000 students. The BSOE is also gaining much recognition for its Interschool Recycling competition, an annual Walkathon, a popular rewards program, and the increasingly visible presence of its Reverse Vending Machines distributed around the Emirate. Taking all this together, it is important to recognize just how interconnected these environmental facilities, educational initiatives and focus on new green technologies are. The powerful ‘Red Giant’, for example, as it transforms cars at their end of their lives into useful materials, is playing its part in a much wider operation – to ensure environmental sustainability in every domain. This holistic outlook is echoed in Bee’ah’s new headquarters, designed by the renowned architect, Zaha Hadid. Inspired by its surroundings – in particular, the sand formations created by the wind’s movement and direction – the building is fully powered by renewable energy, and will be an icon of sustainability in the UAE and the wider region. Bee’ah today serves a million residents and employs 3,500 staff, and has managed almost 9 million tons of waste to date. It already diverts more than two-thirds of the waste it receives away from landfill. Through the ongoing development such as its car recycling facility, and its steadfast focus of innovation and education, the company is on course to establish Sharjah as the very first city in the Middle East in which that no waste at all need to go to landfill – and ensure that our precious resources are wholly reused and revitalized for the benefit of future generations.