KUWAIT CITY: More than 42 million old vehicle tires dumped in Kuwait’s sands have started to be recycled, as the Gulf state tackles a waste problem that created one of the world’s largest tire graveyards.
The massive dump site was a mere 7 km from a residential suburb. Residents were bothered by periodic large fires releasing noxious black smoke.
But this month Kuwait, which wants to build 25,000 new houses on the site, finished moving all the tires to a new location at Al-Salmi, where recycling efforts have begun.
At a plant run by the EPSCO Global General Trading recycling company, employees sort and shred scrap tires, before pressing the particles into rubbery colored flooring tiles.
“The factory is helping society by cleaning up the dumped old tires and turning them into consumer products,” said EPSCO partner and CEO Alaa Hassan from EPSCO, adding they also export products to neighboring Gulf countries and Asia.
The EPSCO plant, which began operations in January 2021, can recycle up to 3 million tires a year, the company said. Scrap tires are a major environmental problem worldwide due to their bulk and the chemicals they can release.
Kuwait, an OPEC member with a population around 4.5 million, had about 2.4 million vehicles in 2019, Central Statistical Bureau data shows, up from 1.5 million in 2010.
The government hopes Al-Salmi will become a tire recycling hub, with more factories planned.
The Al Khair Group transported more than half of all the tires to the new site using up to 500 trucks a day and is planning to open a factory to burn the tires through a process called pyrolysis, its CEO Hammoud Al-Marri said.
Pyrolysis produces a type of oil which can be sold for use in industrial furnaces such as cement factories, and an ash known as carbon black that can be used in various industries.
Kuwait starts to recycle massive tire graveyard
https://arab.news/wkx6a
Kuwait starts to recycle massive tire graveyard
- The EPSCO plant, which began operations in January 2021, can recycle up to 3 million tires a year, the company said
Some Warren Buffett wisdom on his last day leading Berkshire Hathaway
OMAHA, Nebraska: The advice that legendary investor Warren Buffett offered on investing and life over the years helped earn him legions of followers who eagerly read his annual letters and filled an arena in Omaha every year to listen to him at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meetings.
Buffett’s last day as CEO is Wednesday after six decades of building up the Berkshire conglomerate. He’ll remain chairman, but Greg Abel will take over leadership.
Here’s a collection of some of Buffett’s most famous quotes from over the years:
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“Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”
That’s how Buffett summed up his investing approach of buying out-of-favor stocks and companies when they were selling for less than he estimated they were worth.
He also urged investors to stick with industries they understand that fall within their “circle of competence” and offered this classic maxim: “Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget Rule No. 1.”
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“After they first obey all rules, I then want employees to ask themselves whether they are willing to have any contemplated act appear the next day on the front page of their local paper to be read by their spouses, children and friends with the reporting done by an informed and critical reporter.
“If they follow this test, they need not fear my other message to them: Lose money for the firm and I will be understanding; lose a shred of reputation for the firm and I will be ruthless.”
That’s the ethical standard Buffett explained to a Congressional committee in 1991 that he would apply as he cleaned up the Wall Street investment firm Salomon Brothers. He has reiterated the newspaper test many times since over the years.
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“You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.”
Many companies might do well when times are good and the economy is growing, but Buffett told investors that a crisis always reveals whether businesses are making sound decisions.
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“Who you associate with is just enormously important. Don’t expect that you’ll make every decision right on that. But you are going to have your life progress in the general direction of the people you work with, that you admire, that become your friends.”
Buffett always told young people that they should try to hang out with people who they feel are better than them because that will help improve their lives. He said that’s especially true when choosing a spouse, which might be the most important decision in life.
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“Our unwavering conclusion: never bet against America.”
Buffett has always remained steadfast in his belief in the American capitalist system. He wrote in 2021 that “there has been no incubator for unleashing human potential like America. Despite some severe interruptions, our country’s economic progress has been breathtaking.”
