Coincidentally.....

In my last post I was grumbling about recycling facilities in Muscat...well a few days ago I found two. Both in Shatti al Qurm. Not sure how I missed them before, unless they are new. I'm also not sure how the guy at Muscat Municipality couldn't help us when we called, considering they have nice big Muscat Municipality logos on them. Anyway, I'm finally relieved of all those empty bottles!

Recycling driving me environ-mental

When it comes to the environment, Oman authorities appear to be progressing rather well. As well as nature preservation (which I may look into another time), there are various campaigns targeted at public awareness, such as trying to get people to use less plastic bags and to stop people throwing their rubbish outside. There is also the Save Energy Oman campaign with the cute Oryx mascot. They provide simple tips to save power like using energy saving light bulbs and turning lights off when not in the room. (Perhaps Lulu Hypermarket should have a little look into that and take down just some of the thousands of brightly coloured flashing lights from around their stores.)

Recycling is being facilitated to an extent. According to the non-governmental organisation Environment Society of Oman (ESO), paper recycling bins have been placed in various schools and the organisation themselves assist 40 companies with their paper recycling.

As far as I'm aware recycling for the general public hasn't had a great deal of attention. I've been having my own issues with this...in England I always recycled what I could of my household waste. It's easy there because the local Council take it from your house for free. There isn't such a service here; according to the Ministry of Information website this scheme wouldn't be cost effective in rural areas which are remote. A fair point although they don't mention anything about Muscat and other big areas. It pains me to throw away so many recyclable things. The bins in the schools aren't much good to me because I don't have children so I'm not likely to be going to a school. A while ago my husband read that there were plastic bottle recycling bins being put up around Muscat so I started saving all of our empty water bottles and once there were a few bags full we thought we'd find out where the bins are. My husband called Muscat Municipality who had no idea what he was talking about. Now, I can see on the ESO website that there are in fact plastic bottle recycling bins around Muscat, but it doesn't say where. Someone must know where they are???