(MENAFN- Emirates News Agency (WAM))
RAS AL-KHAIMAH, 19th September, 2018 (WAM) -- The Ras al-Khaimah Tourism Development Authority, RAKTDA, recently unveiled the latest developments and significant milestones related to its sustainable tourism and waste management vision for the emirate at its annual Hotel and Hospitality Sustainability event.
The emirate's Waste Management Authority, WMA, and Public Services Department, PSD, also took part in the event, which saw the attendance of Ahmad Mohamed Al Hammadi, PSD Director-General, Sonia Nasser, Executive Director of WMA, and Haitham Mattar, RAKTDA CEO.
The event agenda highlighted the latest updates in the recycling waste management initiatives set for the emirate, shared best practices and key learnings in this sector, and announced the new targets and criteria planned for next year that will serve the overall goals of the emirate.
In 2016, the concerned government bodies of Ras al-Khaimah, comprising RAKTDA, WMA and PSD, collaborated to launch new waste management standards for hotels and tourism establishments across the emirate. The new vision for the emirate incorporated the world's best practices in the sustainability arena, with the aim of increasing waste recycling within the emirate's hotels from four percent to 75 percent by 2021. The move was part of Ras al-Khaimah's efforts to achieve goals set out in the UAE Vision 2021 National Agenda, which includes nationwide criteria on increasing the contribution of clean energy and minimising waste.
Haitham Mattar, said, "As part of the roadmap that we set for the emirate, our target was to recycle 30 percent of the waste of hotels and tourism establishments by end of 2018. Today, we are proud to announce that 26 hotels in Ras al-Khaimah have either met or exceeded the targets placed for them, which is an incredible development in such a short period.
"We are working closely with WMA to do a yearly inspection to monitor the waste management practices of the hotels to ensure that the best practices we set from them comply. Our next target is to focus on the guidelines which we announced recently to ensure food waste treatment and the usage of cooking oil in the in the emirate complies with or exceeds global standards," he added.
Adding to the progress, Sonia Nasser, said, "We have been monitoring and recording the weight of food waste, recyclables and general waste collected and calculating the diversion rate from 2018 for the hospitality industry in Ras al-Khaimah. Since the launch of the Hotel Recycling Initiative, we have increased the generation of recyclables from hotels from 60 tonnes per month to 130 tonnes per month, an increase of 120 percent. Such positive results give us confidence in our capability to achieve our optimistic vision and we look forward to reaching our ultimate targets of achieving the 75 percent recycling diversion rate by 2021."
WAM/Nour Salman
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