Fraunhofer UMSICHT final­izes major waste pro­ject in Kuwait

For the first time, a com­pre­hens­ive nation­wide waste strategy has been developed in a coun­try in the Gulf region. The pro­ject was com­mis­sioned by the Envir­on­ment Pub­lic Author­ity (EPA) of Kuwait. Over a peri­od of five years, the ger­man Fraunhofer Insti­tute for Environmental‑, Safety‑, and Energy Tech­no­logy (UMSICHT) and its part­ners ana­lysed the waste gen­er­a­tion and man­age­ment as well as the 20 major land­fill sites in Kuwait. The data was used to devel­op the Kuwait Nation­al Waste Man­age­ment Strategy 2040 (KNWMS). It sets out the imple­ment­a­tion plan for the next 20 years.

Already at the End of May ​’24 Eng. Sameera Al-Kandari, Act­ing Dir­ect­or Gen­er­al of EPA, has offi­cially presen­ted the KNWMS to all con­cerned author­it­ies in Kuwait. Dur­ing the event the pro­ject team around Fraunhofer Insti­tute UMSICHT was hon­oured with an award for the suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of the pro­ject. »We want to thank Fraunhofer UMSICHT and its part­ners for the long and fruit­ful cooper­a­tion,« says Eng. Sameera Al-Kandari, Act­ing Dir­ect­or Gen­er­al of EPA. »The extent of the eMISK pro­ject has been unpre­ced­en­ted in the region. The form­al present­a­tion of the KNWMS 2040 to the Kuwaiti author­it­ies and pub­lic on 28^th of May rep­res­ent an import­ant step towards its imple­ment­a­tion in the com­ing years.«

Waste sur­vey and data collection

The first major task of the pro­ject named eMISKWaste (Envir­on­ment­al Mon­it­or­ing Inform­a­tion Sys­tem of Kuwait, Domain »Waste«) was to under­stand the cur­rent waste man­age­ment sys­tem and to extra­pol­ate waste amounts and prop­er­ties, as there was only minor report­ing and stat­ist­ic­al data on waste in Kuwait at the start of the pro­ject. In order to do that, the team led by Fraunhofer UMSICHT con­duc­ted 411 inter­views with waste gen­er­at­ors and waste dis­pos­al com­pan­ies, sor­ted 175 mixed waste samples to under­stand their com­pos­i­tion and tested 712 samples for their chem­ic­al-phys­ic­al prop­er­ties. The team found that the coun­try gen­er­ated between 37 to 43 mil­lion tons of waste per year in 2017/18, includ­ing excav­ated soils and waste from min­ing activ­it­ies. »The col­lec­ted data rep­res­ents a good estim­a­tion and over­view of the country’s waste gen­er­a­tion and man­age­ment path­ways. This data forms the basis of all stra­tegic­al decisions that EPA and all involved stake­hold­ers in Kuwait have made based on our recom­mend­a­tions,« says Dipl.-Ing. Kath­ar­ina Reh, respons­ible for the waste sur­vey and KNWMS devel­op­ment. »How­ever, these meas­ure­ments and extra­pol­a­tions can­not replace a con­tinu­ous waste record­ing in the future, which is an import­ant part of the KNWMS 2040.«

Invest­ig­a­tion and mon­it­or­ing of 20 Landfills

In par­al­lel, the Fraunhofer team and its part­ners ana­lysed the 20 most rel­ev­ant land­fill sites, cov­er­ing more than 36 km² of sur­vey area. »The extreme size of the area made it neces­sary to devel­op an integ­rated invest­ig­a­tion meth­od that com­bines geo­phys­ic­al and geo­tech­nic­al meth­ods,« explains pro­ject man­ager Dr.-Ing. Peter Degen­er. In addi­tion, the team built hun­dreds of land­fill gas and ground­wa­ter mon­it­or­ing wells to test the effects of the land­fill sites on the envir­on­ment. »We eval­u­ated the impact of each indi­vidu­al land­fill on selec­ted sub­jects of pro­tec­tion: air, ground­wa­ter, soil and pop­u­la­tion. We found that ten land­fills pose a high risk to at least one of these four goods. In order to make them safe, a con­tin­ued mon­it­or­ing and, in some cases, remedi­ation meas­ures are neces­sary. That is why the imple­ment­a­tion of the KNWMS 2040 is so import­ant,« says Peter Degener. 

Newly developed Geo-Database.

To facil­it­ate the gathered data from the waste sur­veys and land­fill explor­a­tion and all future record­ings, the already exist­ing eMISK-geodata­base was exten­ded for the domain »waste«. 17 new web-applic­a­tions were developed dur­ing the pro­ject. For example, these applic­a­tions facil­it­ate the exchange of data between min­is­tries, man­age treat­ment per­mits or allow the digit­al track­ing of haz­ard­ous wastes.

In a final step, the gathered inform­a­tion and tools were used to devel­op the Waste Strategy itself: KNWMS 2040. »Of course, the strategy devel­op­ment is a polit­ic­al pro­cess. We provide and inter­pret the data and give recom­mend­a­tions to facil­it­ate the decision mak­ing. For instance, we developed two to three altern­at­ive man­age­ment scen­ari­os for each of the major waste streams to show the eco­nom­ic, eco­lo­gic­al and social effects of dif­fer­ent approaches,« says M.Sc. Lena Ber­sch, coordin­at­or of the strategy devel­op­ment. »Togeth­er with EPA and the Kuwaiti stake­hold­ers we developed 28 tar­gets. One of the major goals is to drastic­ally reduce the land­fill rate by set­ting recyc­ling and recov­ery tar­gets for waste streams like muni­cip­al sol­id waste and con­struc­tion and demoli­tion waste. But we also focused on oth­er waste streams, land­fill rehab­il­it­a­tion, leg­al adapt­a­tion, capa­city build­ing and monitoring.«

Unique pro­ject for the whole gulf region

»We are both proud and grate­ful for the oppor­tun­ity to have worked on this ambi­tious pro­ject,« says Prof. Dr.-Ing. Mat­thi­as Franke, Dir­ect­or of the Insti­tute Branch Sulzbach-Rosen­berg of Fraunhofer UMSICHT. »The eMISK-Waste pro­ject truly rep­res­ents a unique flag­ship pro­ject in the whole gulf region and bey­ond and we are grate­ful for the long and fruit­ful cooper­a­tion with EPA, the loc­al stake­hold­ers and our partners.«

The con­sor­ti­um com­prised envero GmbH, INFA Insti­tute, INTE­CUS GmbH, Ram­boll Group, Black­Forest Solu­tions GmbH, Ingenie­ur­gruppe RUK GmbH, Nordum Academy and TOMM+C as well as Gis­con Middle East and Dar Al Bea’a Envir­on­ment­al Consultants.

Waste Man­age­ment Atlas of Kuwait

The Waste Man­age­ment Atlas of Kuwait, avail­able in Eng­lish and Arab­ic lan­guage, dis­plays some of the main res­ults of this pro­ject in inform­at­ive and access­ible graphs and fig­ures. It illus­trates the cur­rent status of waste gen­er­a­tion and man­age­ment for all waste types from house­hold over con­struc­tion up to haz­ard­ous indus­tri­al waste and from col­lec­tion to final dis­pos­al of these wastes.

Fur­ther­more, the envir­on­ment­al status of 17 land­fills in Kuwait is presen­ted, includ­ing land­fill body volumes, com­pos­i­tion and rehab­il­it­a­tion status. Based on this, it looks ahead and presents the waste man­age­ment strategy to pre­vent future harm to humans and the envir­on­ment and increase waste recyc­ling and recovery.