SANHAJA, Tunisia: In a northern Tunisian olive grove, Yassine Khelifi’s small workshop hums as a large machine turns olive waste into a valuable energy source in a country heavily reliant on imported fuel.
Holding a handful of compacted olive residue — a thick paste left over from oil extraction — Khelifi said: “This is what we need today. How can we turn something worthless into wealth?“
For generations, rural households in Tunisia have burned olive waste for cooking and heating, or used it as animal feed.
The International Olive Council estimated Tunisia will be the world’s third-largest olive oil producer in 2024-2025, with an expected yield of 340,000 tons.
The waste generated by the oil extraction is staggering.
Khelifi, an engineer who grew up in a family of farmers, founded Bioheat in 2022 to tackle the issue. He recalled watching workers in olive mills use the olive residue as fuel.
“I always wondered how this material could burn for so long without going out,” he said. “That’s when I asked myself: ‘Why not turn it into energy?’“
Beyond profit, Khelifi hopes his startup helps “reducing the use of firewood as the country faces deforestation and climate change.”
At his workshop, employees transport truckloads of olive waste, stacking it high before feeding it into the processing machines.
The material is then compacted into cylindrical briquettes and left to dry for a month under the sun and in greenhouses before its packaging and sale.
Khelifi began developing his idea in 2018 after he traveled across Europe searching for a machine to turn the olive paste into long-burning fuel.
Unable to find the right technology, he returned to Tunisia and spent four years experimenting with various motors and mechanical parts.
By 2021, he had developed a machine that produced briquettes with just eight-percent moisture.
He said this amount significantly reduces carbon emissions compared to firewood, which requires months of drying and often retains more than double the amount of moisture.
Bioheat found a market among Tunisian restaurants, guesthouses, and schools in underdeveloped regions, where winter temperatures at times drop below freezing.
But the majority of its production — about 60 percent — is set for exports to France and Canada, Khelifi said.
The company now employs 10 people and is targeting production of 600 tons of briquettes in 2025, he added.
Selim Sahli, 40, who runs a guesthouse, said he replaced traditional firewood with Khelifi’s briquettes for heating and cooking.
“It’s an eco-friendly and cost-effective alternative,” he said. “It’s clean, easy to use, and has reduced my heating costs by a third.”
Mohamed Harrar, the owner of a pizza shop on the outskirts of Tunis, praised the briquettes for reducing smoke emissions, which he said previously irritated his neighbors.
“Besides, this waste carries the soul of Tunisian olives and gives the pizza a special flavour,” he added.
Given Tunisia’s significant olive oil production, waste byproducts pose both a challenge and an opportunity.
Noureddine Nasr, an agricultural and rural development expert, said around 600,000 tons of olive waste is produced annually.
“Harnessing this waste can protect the environment, create jobs, and generate wealth,” he said.
Nasr believes repurposing olive waste could also help alleviate Tunisia’s heavy dependence on imported fuel.
The country imports more than 60 percent of its energy needs, a reliance that widens its trade deficit and strains government subsidies, according to a 2023 World Bank report.
Fuel and gas shortages are common during winter, particularly in Tunisia’s northwestern provinces, where households struggle to keep warm.
Redirecting agricultural waste into alternative energy sources could ease this burden.
Yet for entrepreneurs like Khelifi, launching a startup in Tunisia is fraught with challenges.
“The biggest hurdle was funding,” he said, lamenting high-interest bank loans. “It felt like walking on a road full of potholes.”
But now his goal is “to leave my mark as a key player in Tunisia’s transition to clean energy,” he added. “And hopefully, the world’s, too.”
Tunisian startup turns olive waste into clean energy
https://arab.news/zs4mg
Tunisian startup turns olive waste into clean energy
- For generations, rural households in Tunisia have burned olive waste for cooking and heating, or used it as animal feed
- The International Olive Council estimated Tunisia will be the world’s third-largest olive oil producer in 2024-2025, with an expected yield of 340,000 tons
Survival in Gaza ‘on the edge,’ living conditions ‘brutal’ despite easing of hunger, UN officials warn
- ‘The situation remains extremely precarious … Having an entire population living on the brink is just not acceptable,’ says UNICEF deputy executive director
- ‘Hundreds of thousands of people are shivering in fabric tents that don’t keep the heat in or the rain out,’ adds World Food Programme deputy executive director
NEW YORK CITY: Survival in Gaza remains “on the edge” and the conditions there are “extremely brutal,” senior UN officials said on Monday, despite some easing of the situation compared with last year.
They warned that the entire population of the battered enclave is living on the brink, in what they described as an unacceptable situation. Urgent decisions are needed to ensure humanitarian access remains open, and to prevent fragile gains from being reversed they added.
“The situation remains extremely precarious, with survival at the edge,” the deputy executive director of UNICEF, Ted Chaiban, told reporters after returning from a visit to Gaza and the West Bank.
“Having an entire population living on the brink is just not acceptable.”
Carl Skau, the World Food Programme’s deputy executive director, who accompanied Chaiban on the visit, said the living conditions for hundreds of thousands of displaced people were “just brutal,” with families sheltering in flimsy tents or heavily damaged buildings in Gaza as winter storms batter the territory.
“Hundreds of thousands of people are shivering in fabric tents that don’t keep the heat in or the rain out,” Skau said.
“I met a woman, who had given birth just 10 days earlier, sitting on a wet mattress in a cold tent on the beach. It was absolutely brutal.”
Both officials said the situation had improved compared with a year ago, when Gaza was on the brink of famine, but stressed that the gains were fragile and could easily be reversed.
“The ceasefire has allowed us to rein in famine,” Skau said. “Most people I spoke to were eating at least once a day. But there is still a very long way to go. The situation is extremely fragile.”
Chaiban said that more aid and commercial goods were entering Gaza and the availability of food had improved, but he warned that the humanitarian crisis remained deadly, for children in particular.
“More than 100 children have been reported killed since the ceasefire,” he said, adding that about 100,000 youngsters are still acutely malnourished and require long-term care.
About 1.3 million people, many of them children, still lack proper shelter, Chaiban added, as families continue to live in flimsy tents or bombed-out buildings, exposed to heavy rain, strong winds and freezing temperatures.
At least 10 children reportedly have died of hypothermia since winter began.
“It really is miserable in those tents,” Chaiban said.
Skau said hundreds of thousands of people remain displaced, unable to return to homes that had been reduced to rubble, and struggling to survive with little protection from the elements.
“I spoke to a woman who had lost her husband, most of her relatives and her home,” he said. “She was left with four children and absolutely nothing.”
Both officials highlighted moments of resilience amid the devastation, including children who had returned to learning and families who were attempting to rebuild fragments of normal life, but said such signs of hope should not obscure the sheer scale of the ongoing suffering.
“The gains we’ve made can easily be reversed,” Skau said. “So much more needs to be done now.”
Both of the officials said further progress would depend on the continuation of the ceasefire agreement and predictable humanitarian access, including the opening and sustained operation of multiple border crossings, and routes into and within Gaza. Aid workers need safe conditions in which to operate at scale, they added.
Shelter remains the most urgent need as winter storms continue; Skau said the immediate priority was to “flood the strip with shelter,” while Chaiban said decisions were urgently needed to ensure access for essential supplies and to restore basic services.
The coming weeks will be critical, Chaiban said, adding: “We have a window to change the trajectory for children in Gaza. We can’t waste it.”
