Friday 19 / April / 2024
Muscat: With hundreds of tonnes of waste being dumped every day from Oman oil refineries, Siham Said Al Siyabi, a young Omani girl decided to re-use the hazardous waste and turn it into beautiful, yet environment friendly cement tiles.
Al Siyabi’s award-winning innovation is 70 per cent made of recycled materials, which, according to her, aims to reduce the amount of petroleum refinery waste that is dumped into Oman’s landfills, polluting air and ground water.
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“The objective of the project is to convert petroleum refineries’ waste that is classified as industrial hazardous waste, that causes environmental risks and economic losses (financial) to a product that offers environmental, economic, industrial and social benefits for the community,” Al Siyabi stated.
A report, which was published on www.bioenergyconsult.com, pointed out that Oman produced about 1.6 million tonnes of solid waste in 2010. The per capita waste generation is more than 1.5 kilogram per day, among the highest in the world.
“This problem gave me an opportunity to conduct a study on how to treat and reuse such waste by using a new and innovative technique,” she said.
Recently, Al Siyabi’s cement tiles bagged the second spot for the Entrepreneurship Award given by the General Authority of small and medium enterprises (Riyada) in the category of the Best Project Idea 2015. The project has won a number of awards internationally and locally, and was adjudged the fifth winner as the best innovative project idea to be applied globally in a competition set up by the British magazine International Journal of Engineering Research and Technology in 2013. Al Siyabi was also declared the second winner in the in a competition held by the Caledonian College of Engineering for innovative student projects in 2013. Recently, she became the first winner of the Omantel Excellence SME Award in the category of the best project idea in 2015.
Nevertheless, Al Siyabi said her greatest award would be when her idea is implemented in Oman, which will be her biggest motivation to produce more innovative ideas. The tiles are made in Oman at a local factory. However, the project is not ready to go commercial as it needs finanical support, according to Al Siyabi.
“When you reach deep to find the meaning of the word success, you find that it simply means insisting,” Al Siyabi concluded.
