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Arab Contractors Experience in Solid Waste Management

Prepared by:
Eng. Ibrahim Mahlab, Vice Chairman, Arab Contractors
Cairo, Egypt

1. Introduction

   In many instances, construction may be considered a non-environmentally friendly industry. However, its negative impacts on the environment are temporary and they usually disappear after the completion of the projects leaving behind them their positive impacts.

   The Arab Contractors, a public sector organization in Egypt, has great concerns about environment protection and pollution prevention. It was one of the first enterprises in Egypt that founded the Association of Enterprises for Environmental Conservation (AEEC) that is honored to have as its chairman Engineer Ismail Osman. The Arab Contractors along with the AEEC have sponsored many environmental activities. The most recent one being the discussion session about "Solid Waste Management - Challenges & Solutions" that was organized by AEEC. This Session was hosted by the Arab Contractors and honored by the presence of H.E. Nadia Makram Ebeid the State Minister of Environment, Council Maher El Guindy, Governor of Giza and several government officials and businessmen.

   Arab Contractors has done a lot in reducing the negative impacts of construction activities on the environment and toward achieving sustainable waste management which is done through Prevention of waste, Reuse of material, and Recycling.


 
2. Construction Activities

   The main activities in construction are related to:

   • Reinforcement Steel (bars)
   • Formwork
   • Concrete
   • Asphalt
   • Construction solid waste recycling
   • Equipment & Vehicles.

   2.1 Reinforcement Steel

   Arab Contractors has established the first reinforcement steel preparation factory, one of very few organizations in Egypt that obtained both ISO 9000 & 14000 certificates. According to preset dimensions & specification, the factory provides precut and pre shaped steel bars of different sizes to major sites, this reduces the waste of steel on sites. It also eliminates the cutting and bending of bars, which minimizes noise and waste on sites. Moreover, the steel factory optimizes the use of raw materials and can use any bar size that may occur during cutting. It also manufactures bolts from the very small pieces of steel.

   2.2 Formwork

   Using metal formwork instead of timber results in the following advantages:

   • Higher quality of work.
   • Reduces waste, waste in timber formwork is 8-10 times higher than that generated from meal formwork .
   • Reuse of metal formwork may reach 100 times while it hardly reaches 8 times when using timber.
   • Reduce time and labor which result also in lower unit cost of concrete.
   • Eliminate possibility of fire which if occurs will result in disaster for both the construction project and the surrounding environment.

   2.3 Concrete Batch plant

   Adopting modern technologies in concrete mixing by using computerized batch plants that adjust the quality and proportion of the ingredients in the concrete mix automatically. Old methods in mixing concrete manually result in lower quality mix, higher usage of raw material, 15-20% higher waste, air pollution due to concrete dust while in modern batch plants, cement is used from silos which eliminate air pollution with cement dust.

   The following tables show Environmental measurements of air around the batch plant in one of the Arab Contractors' sites and its comparison with allowed percentages according to the Egyptian Environment law no. 4 .

   Table 1: Percentage of Dust in Air

   Site or Location	Concentration Mg/m3
   Beside Administrative Building	0.291
   Beside Controlling Building	0.311
   Beside Raw Storage	1.714
   Beside the workshop	0.304
   Permissible Limits by Law4/94	5

    

   Table 2: Percentage of Gases

   Gases	Measurement location	Concentration Particles in millions	Permissible limits
   CO	- Administration offices - In Site Field - Beside mixer	2.1 2.0 2.0	5
   CO2	- Administration offices - In Site Field - Beside mixer	0.4 0.5 0.6	2
   Hydrocarbons	- Administration offices - In Site Field - Beside mixer	3.9 4.3 3.0	-

    

   Table 3: Noise Measurement (decibel)

   Site or Location	Noise (decibel)
   Beside concrete batch plant	88
   Beside Administrative Bldg.	68
   Beside Washer	89
   Beside Storage	87
   Inside Controlling room	64
   Permissible Limits by Law4/94	90

   The above tables show the very low percentages of wastes and air pollution on sites.

   2.4 Asphalt Batch Plant

   Using modern Asphalt batch plants also provides sustainable solutions for controlling the emissions of pollution during the production of Asphalt used in paving roads. Arab Contractors' Road department has done a lot of work to ensure the compliance of its asphalt plants with the requirement of law no. 4 for the environment.

   The following tables show measurements of air pollution in areas surrounding the Asphalt plant at one of Arab Contractors' sites compared to the allowed percentages.

   Table 4: Concentration of Suspended particles

   Site or Location	Concentration Milligram/m3
   Main Gate	0.112
   Administrative Building	0.111
   Concrete Feeder	0.071
   The workshop	0.117
   Mixer Control room	0.362
   Tanks	0.118
   Permissible Limits by Law4/94	5.000

    

   Table 5: Average Concentration of emissions in different sites

   Location	Nitrous Ppm	Co Ppm	So2 Ppm	Xylene Ppm	Benzyl chloride Ppm	T. Hydrocarbon Ppm
   Administrative Bldg.	0.0	0.7	0.2	2.1	0.4	0.4
   Main Gate	0.0	0.5	0.2	0.9	0.6	0.8
   Workshop	0.0	0.7	0.6	3.5	0.5	1.1
   Control Room	0.1	0.8	0.8	11	0.8	0.7
   Bitumen Tanks	0.1	1.9	0.8	12	0.8	1.6
   Concrete Feeder	0.0	0.1	0.1	0.6	0.5	0.6
   Permissible Limits	-	50	2	-	1	-

    

   Table 6: Noise Measurement (decibel)

   Site or Location	Noise (decibel)
   Administrative Bldg.	50.0
   Main Gate	53.0
   Beside Workshop	60.5
   Concrete Feeder	50.0
   Mixer Control room	85.0
   Bitumen Tanks	65.5
   Permissible Limits by Law4/94	90.0

   2.5 Construction Solid Waste Recycling

   Regarding solid waste, which is a major problem to most contractors. The Arab Contractors Company is now adopting a new technology that has been recently offered by one of its member companies. In brief, it includes the crushing of construction solid waste: concrete, broken bricks, limestone... etc. and turns it into fine products that can be used in manufacturing bricks, normal concrete landfill, small path ways and all other activities required on site.

   This equipment is now at Al Azhar Hospital Project where construction waste is turned into bricks on site instead of having to transport them.

   2.6 Equipment & vehicles

   To assist in improving the quality of air, Arab Contractors has changed part of its vehicles to natural gas and in the process of changing most of its fleet. It also carries out a plan for emission control testing and tuning all of its vehicles in order to comply with Environmental and Traffic Regulations.

Table of Contents

• Brochure
• 
• 



• International Year of Forests
• 
• 



• World Environment Day
• 
• 



• UNEP Campaign
• 
•