The Jeddah Municipality is set to replace the city’s dumpsters with eco-friendly bins following complaints that the current garbage disposal units violate sanitation standards and mar cityscape.

 

Abdulaziz Al-Ghamdi, Jeddah Municipality spokesman, said that the municipality had contracted a local company to design the new project and that the current dumpsters are unsanitary breeding grounds for rats and insects.

 

Ruqqaya Kashgari, CEO of the Saudi Society for Environmental Studies and professor of biology at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, said that Jeddah should follow the examples set by advanced nations in deploying bins for different elements and recycling. “Our dumpsters have all kinds of waste mixed together,” Kashgari said. “The combination of food leftovers, glass, liquids and tins make dumpsters a hotbed for cats, flies and other insects.”

 

“We should separate plastic, paper, glass and organic materials to help the process of recycling,” she said. “Citizens should be aware of how to deal with garbage and be devoted to cleaning up their city as a part of their social responsibility.”

 

“Garbage diggers also threaten sanitation when they open up garbage bags looking for things they can re-use. This increases the presence of animals and contaminates the streets with bacteria, not to mention the foul odor,” Kashgari said. She called on authorities to intensify supervision of neighborhood dumpsters.

 

She also called for a reduction in the use of plastic bags to help save the environment. “Some countries charge extra fees for using plastic bags in order to discourage use,” she said.