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LEADIN The United Arab Emirates is renowned for its poor environmental record - a country with gas-guzzling 4x4s, air conditioned concrete sky scrapers and high electricity and water bills. It also has one of the highest rates of waste per person at 2.5kg per person per day compared to 2.1kg in the US and just 0.85kg in China. In the past all its rubbish was thrown into landfill sites, but now moves are afoot to change this, with the Emirate of Sharjah leading the way. STORYLINE: Not that long ago all this waste would have ended up in desert landfill sites. In Dubai and some of the other emirates most of it still does. But four years ago the Emirate of Sharjah introduced a major recycling initiative. Now 40 per cent of all waste is recycled and by 2015 Sharjah is aiming for virtually nothing to go into landfill sites. The private company Bee'ah was set up in Sharjah with the backing of Sheikh Sultan Bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, who is a keen environmentalist and consultants from the Netherlands are offering guidance. It has a contract to run the municipality's waste collections, clean roads and manage the landfill sites - which have all been tidied up. This year different coloured recycling bins were introduced to all households and throughout the emirate to encourage individuals to separate their waste. At this material recovery facility - the third biggest in the world - teams of workers are responsible for sorting plastics, cans and bottles which are then baled into bundles and sent to factories for recycling. Bee'ah is now trying to raise awareness of the benefits of recycling so that less waste needs to be manually sorted by workers. "In the last few years we've started building the infrastructure but the challenges we face is the awareness side. Having started, this year, our residential recycling programme we are focusing more on the residents of Sharjah, educating them and making them aware of the problems of waste," Khaled Al Huraimel, CEO of Bee'ah, says. But it's not just household rubbish that's being recycled; other products such as construction waste and even car tyres are being broken down and reused. In the past tyres were left to rot in landfill sites. Four-thousand tyres a day are discarded in Sharjah and there is still a backlog of seven million waiting to be processed. Metal has to be removed from each tyre before it can be broken down and turned into rubber chips. These are made into tiles and rubber asphalt for roads and tracks - like this running track in Sharjah. Bee'ah is now looking ahead to working with the other Emirates to manage waste and encourage recycling. The next step is to find a way to turn waste into energy. A few months ago a research centre was set up at the American University of Sharjah to look at ways of turning waste into valuable resources and finding a way of breaking down plastic. In Dubai the Emirates Environmental Group tries to raise awareness about recycling. During their annual can collection day they encourage companies and schools to bring in aluminium cans for collection. The cans are weighed and prizes are handed out in a bid to encourage recycling. Since they started collecting cans in 1997 they've sent nearly 150,000kgs for recycling. But still - at less than 10 per cent of the overall number- there is still more that can be achieved. The remaining 90 per cent get buried in the desert. The group, spearheaded by Emirati Habiba Al Marashi, has set up recycling centres around the Emirates and offers an education programme in schools in a bid to raise awareness amongst the next generation. During this year's can collection day EEG managed to collect 5,000kg of cans. You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/8d83a513d47166e9f1a4dd848526bda2 Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork