Qatar 2022: Approximately 80% of waste from stadiums recycled

Doha, Qatar | QNA | Qatars commitment to staging a sustainable FIFA World Cup included extensive efforts to minimize waste and recycle used materials throughout the tournament. After successfully hosting 64 matches, tournament organizers ensured that more than 2,000 tons of waste were recycled or composted, the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy (SC) said.

Eng. Bodour Al Meer, the SC’s Sustainability Executive Director, said: “We are proud to announce that approximately 80% of waste from stadiums has been recycled. This is a massive achievement that has been delivered thanks to detailed planning and unwavering commitment from tournament organizers and national stakeholders.” The Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy (SC), FIFA and the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 LLC, implemented a robust program which involved a number of initiatives before and during the tournament. This included the use of compostable food packaging, encouraging fans to segregate waste and placing sorting facilities at all eight stadiums.

“I would like to thank all of our partners, most notably APEX Waste Solutions and Management Company, whose teams manually separated all the waste in each of our stadiums, before distributing it to local recyclers of plastic, cardboard, compost, metal, glass and electronic waste,” added Al Meer.

Nasser Al Khalaf, CEO of APEX Waste Solutions and Management Company said: “As a Qatari company, we are proud to have been a part of ensuring that Qatar 2022 left behind a sustainable legacy for future generations. Through our work with the SC, we were able to ensure that waste generated at stadiums was segregated on site before being taken to any recycling facility, which increased the recycling rate of our project.” A main focus of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Sustainability Strategy is reducing waste and increasing recycling, especially of plastics. To achieve that, tournament organizers successfully replaced plastic with compostable and reusable alternatives. For unavoidable plastics, Qatar 2022 worked diligently to remove them from the waste streams so that they can be recycled.

Organizers engaged with fans ahead of the tournament to encourage them to recycle as much as possible. There were also several public activations throughout Qatar 2022 that engaged fans and encouraged the uptake of recycling bins at tournament sites. The success of this initiative during the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 will certainly create a long last legacy where recycling plays an integral part in the way waste is managed in Qatar.