One of the highest priorities of Suez Governorate was the establishment of an integrated management system of hazardous waste (HW) that serves its growing industrial activity. Within this context, the Suez Canal Regional Branch Office (RBO) of the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (EEAA) initiated the process of collecting industrial hazardous waste data in Suez.
The RBO, in cooperation with the Decentralization of Environmental Management (DEM) component of the DANIDA-funded Environmental Sector Program (ESP), commissioned Environics to manage and contribute to this process.
Environics undertook several activities towards the aim of establishing a Hazardous Waste Management (HWM) system in Suez. The activities started with a seminar on industrial HWM and its activities, to which the stakeholders from major industrial establishments and governmental bodies were invited. The seminar was followed by a training course for the staffs of the RBO, the Environmental Management Unit (EMU) of Suez, the local districts, and other concerned governmental entities on identifying HW and collecting data on its generation and management.
Based on the plan developed as a result of this training, a team from the RBO and local districts gathered data on the HW generated by industrial establishments and workshops. Environics provided technical assistance to the data gathering process through:
– Introducing and informing the industrial establishments of the data gathering forms, and following-up on the use of these forms.
– Reviewing the data gathering forms, which involved developing a unified review methodology and comparing data.
– Setting a final data gathering system and developing the necessary tools, which vary depending on the industrial activity and scale.
This data, along with a preliminary HWM system developed by Environics, was presented to the involved parties and stakeholders in a participatory meeting. The proposed system was modified based on the results of the meeting. Environics delivered a final report proposing alternatives for a HWM system in Suez, which was to be complemented with elaborate feasibility studies to choose the most suitable integrated system.