“The promises continue from the Ministry of Electricity regarding improving electricity supply hours every year with the onset of summer and rising temperatures, to appease the angry street towards the management of this thorny file. After the government announced its direction towards initiating a project to recycle waste in generating electricity, the Parliamentary Electricity and Energy Committee revealed today, Tuesday, the locations that the project will cover.
It is noteworthy that five successive governments have pledged to address the waste crisis, which has become a serious problem threatening the lives of many Iraqis, yet no significant progress has been made on the ground.
Committee member Zikra Al-Redini mentioned in an interview with “Al-Alam Al-Jadeed” that “the areas to be supplied with electricity from these plants are those close to the station in the Nahrawan area south of Baghdad.”
She added that “the expected capacity of these plants to generate electricity ranges from 80 to 90 megawatts depending on the calorific value of the waste.”
She pointed out that “the plants will be equipped to operate with fourth-generation and above technology, which is a modern technology adopted in many advanced countries such as Japan, Europe, the United States, Turkey, and China.”
She also noted that the committee, along with “generalizing the experience to other provinces upon the project’s launch and success, due to its positive effects in alleviating the environmental impact in society, as it is clean energy without emissions, and covers part of the demand for electricity.”
Waste in Iraq is one of the most significant risks threatening human health and the environment, amid the absence of sanitary landfills and the lack of proper recycling methods, with Iraq paying a heavy price for its inability to deal with this issue, adding a new environmental crisis to the country, after climate change.
Iraq produces 20 million tons of waste daily, with the Baghdad Municipality alone producing 9,000 tons daily. These quantities represent a huge wealth awaiting investment through recycling to produce new usable materials, while simultaneously preserving the environment and providing job opportunities for the unemployed.
Waste covers large areas in various Iraqi provinces, making it vulnerable to burning by citizens to dispose of it and the foul odors emanating from it, leading to the escalation of toxic fumes in those areas, causing suffocation among residents.
The total amount of waste collected annually in Iraq in 2023 was about 11 million tons, with the rate of waste generated per capita in Iraq being 1.5 kilograms per day, according to statistics from the Ministry of Planning.
Thousands of tons of waste are dumped daily, especially in the capital Baghdad, where a large portion estimated at about 30,000 tons of solid waste and medical waste is dumped daily, exposing citizens to harm, environmental pollutants, and various diseases.
Iraqi provinces suffer from allocating vast areas in most of their regions for waste dumping, with many residents resorting to burning it to get rid of it and the foul odors emanating from it, causing toxic fumes to escalate in those areas, exposing residents to suffocation. This has led many of them to file complaints with the Ministry of Environment to demand relief from the polluted dumps.
It is worth mentioning that there are many projects to establish recycling plants and convert waste into usable materials, such as fertilizers or sorting solid materials, that have been proposed in recent years, but in 2014, due to the financial crisis and the war on the ISIS organization, most of them were halted, prompting the Baghdad Municipality to resort to traditional dumping methods.”
