Cooperation Council countries achieve the sustainable development goals in waste management and reduce the per capita share

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Muscat on July 20 / WAM / The latest report of the statistical center of the Gulf Cooperation Council states showed that the GCC countries managed to achieve the 12th goal of sustainable development goals, related to recycling and using dangerous waste, achieving 30 % for the year 2023, noting that the cumulative number of national reports of the Cooperation Council in the Basel Convention to control dangerous waste reached 87 national reports.

The report recorded a remarkable positive indication, as the per capita livelihood of living in the GCC states decreased by 17.4%, to 1.4 kg per person per day by the end of 2023, and the amount of waste of the collected living families witnessed a decrease in the last three years after reaching its peak in 2020 at 35.5 million tons, to decrease to 30.8 million tons in 2023.

The data shows a significant investment in enhancing capabilities and infrastructure for waste treatment. The total treatment of the treated waste increased by the end of 2023 to 192.0 million tons, an increase of 128.5% compared to 2019.

This development is especially evident in the medical waste sector, despite the decline in its collected quantities by 11.4% in 2023 compared to 2022 after the Kofid-19 pandemic, but the GCC countries raised the number of sites allocated to them to 23 sites, an increase of 27.8%, and strengthened the design capacity of these sites by 123.9% to reach 207.5 thousand metric tons.

The report estimated the total waste collected in the countries of the Cooperation Council by the end of 2023 at about 262.7 million tons, an increase of 153.7 %compared to 2019, as the percentage of non -dangerous waste collected constituted 99.2 %, while the percentage of dangerous waste exported from the Cooperation Council to the countries of the world for 95.8 %, indicating that the treatment is carried out through recycling or retrieval of minerals and metal vehicles from them.

According to the report, the amount of dangerous waste collected from the industrial sector increased after the Kofid-19 pandem One million tons in 2019 to 14.3 million tons in 2023.

An analytical study from the Mordor Intelligence agency indicates that this vital sector represents a promising market, as it is estimated in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries by about 68.3 billion US dollars in 2025, and is expected to reach 97.4 billion US dollars by 2030, with an annual growth rate of 7.4%.