RECAPP, the UAE’s first free-of-charge door-to-door recycling service, has inaugurated its first recycling warehouse in Dubai. The newly opened warehouse in Al Quoz is the first sorting facility in Dubai to treat recyclables digitally collected from the doorstep of users.
The opening ceremony included keynote speeches from sustainability leaders in the UAE, including Sebastien Chauvin, CEO of Veolia Middle East; Jérôme Viricel, General Manager of RECAPP; Alan Smith, CEO of Agthia Group; and Yasmine Berbir, Head of Sustainability at Nestlé Middle East.
Commenting on the opening, Jérôme Viricel, General Manager of RECAPP at Veolia Middle East, said: “We are very pleased to inaugurate RECAPP’s new warehouse in Al Quoz, highlighting our recent milestone of expanding into Dubai. To date, we have built a community of 15,000 recyclers across Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and the opening of our Al Quoz warehouse marks the next phase in our growth, toward our ultimate goal of bringing our recycling service to the whole of the United Arab Emirates.”
Sebastien Chauvin, CEO of Veolia Middle East, said: “We launched RECAPP in November 2020 with a mission to support local communities as they strive to adopt a more sustainable lifestyle. Today, it is evident that RECAPP is delivering on that promise, and is only set to grow its operations from this point. We are immensely proud of the work RECAPP is doing to empower residents to take up recycling, in line with Veolia’s commitment to developing the recycling ecosystem in the UAE and closing the loop of resources.”
At the inauguration, Jérôme Viricel led attendees through a tour of the warehouse, where plastic bottles and aluminum cans are segregated and baled with a daily segregation capacity of 1 tonne.
Alan Smith, Chief Executive Officer of Agthia Group and special guest speaker at the inauguration commented:“We are delighted to join RECAPP in celebrating the opening of their Dubai warehouse, a testament to how far the app has come in less than two years. As one of Veolia’s partners in launching RECAPP, Agthia have supported the application since the very beginning, and we look forward to our continued collaboration towards a circular economy in the UAE.”
RECAPP empowers each individual in their recycling process by offering an easy and efficient way to schedule pick-ups for plastic bottles and aluminum cans. After segregating recyclables from general waste at home, residents can simply download the Go RECAPP application from the App Store or Google Play, and schedule a pick-up time at their convenience. RECAPP will then collect the recyclables from the user’s doorstep and recycle them, completely free of charge.
The inauguration marked an important milestone in the RECAPP journey to celebrate 20,000 downloads of the app and to announce the renewed support of Nestlé MENA for RECAPP.
“At Nestlé, we are committed to making 100% of our packaging recyclable or reusable by 2025. We are also committed to contributing to concerted action, by playing an active role in collection, sorting, and recycling schemes to promote a circular economy. We are pleased to be among the members who partnered with Veolia to launch the RECAPP app in the UAE, which offers a convenient and rewarding solution to recycle from home,” said Yasmine Berbir, Head of Sustainability for Nestlé Middle East and North Africa.
Each time a user recycles, points are accumulated based on the weight of the collected recyclables, and the user can redeem the points with RECAPP’s reward partners – namely Agthia with Al Ain Water and 1971 Store, Carrefour, Upfill, and De L’Arta.
RECAPP was launched in November 2020 by Veolia Middle East, the benchmark company for ecological transformation, and operates in Abu Dhabi and select areas of Dubai. To date, RECAPP has built a community of 15,000 registered users and collected 180 tonnes of recyclables, including transparent and opaque plastic bottles and aluminum cans.