Bee’ah Recycling launches SRF facility producing green fuel: Bee’ah Recycling — a subsidiary of Emirati waste management company Bee’ah — has added a new solid recovered fuel (SRF) processing facility to its integrated waste management complex in Sharjah, according to a WAM statement. The facility will produce an alternative green fuel from the commercial residue waste it receives — which can be used to power cement factories. Bee’ah says the facility reduces both CO2 emissions and landfill, while helping to build a circular economy.

The facility can produce 85k tonnes of green fuel every year, or 250 tonnes a day, the statement says. Most of this will be sold to Sharjah Cement, which entered into an agreement in late-2020 to receive 73k tonnes of green fuel from Bee’ah Recycling every year. Bee’ah Recycling claims the facility’s waste processing model is the first of its kind in the region.

Investment ticket is a mystery, but the hope is it will be “financially viable”: The statement doesn’t disclose how much was invested in the SRF facility or the price at which Bee’ah Recycling will sell its green fuel. But the facility is operating on a model that’s both environmentally beneficial and financially viable, Bee’ah Recycling CEO Daker El Rabaya is quoted in the statement as saying. “The SRF facility follows a purely commercial model that is fully independent of gate fees,” El Rabaya added. Gate fees are the payments usually charged by waste treatment facilities to accept waste.

Other countries in the region — like Egypt — have struggled to get WtE off the ground: Though WtE was touted as a potentially lucrative shot for Egypt’s private sector and the country launched its first WtE plant last year, companies told Enterprise that structural problems meant widespread WtE investment was still not financially viable. More financial incentives — including gate fees paid by the government — were essential to get the industry off the ground, private sector players told Enterprise.