Palestinians forced to recycle plastic for fuel in Gaza

 Palestinians living in Gaza, one of the poorest regions in the Middle East, cannot afford high fuel costs and instead try to get cheap diesel by recycling used plastic.

According to AFP news agency, experts say that due to the blockade imposed by Israel for fifteen years, the residents here have seen this as an economic solution in this area, which is the cause of serious environmental and health risks.

Standing in front of rusting metal machinery and fuel containers, Palestinian citizen Mahmoud al-Kafranah described how he and his brother are forced to work recycling plastic in Gaza.

A 25-year-old Palestinian citizen, while working on this furnace in the suburbs of Jabalia in northern Gaza, said that in 2018, a few of our friends searched the internet and started experiments to implement this project.

He said that we failed a few times in extracting fuel from waste, so after eight months of hard work, we succeeded in extracting fuel.

In the setup here, some of the tanks are connected by pipes into which pieces of plastic are poured from the outside.

This particular process begins with burning wood in a furnace under a large clay-covered tank.

The tank contains about one and a half tons of shredded plastic. When the plastic melts from the heat of the fire, the vapor flows through a pipe into a water tank where the solution cools and drips into the containers as fuel and later the fuel is needed. This solution is sold as a solution.

Black smoke comes out of the tank, which holds several pipes and plastic spread over the clay furnace.

Only a few workers use face masks and gloves to complete the process of melting shredded plastic bags, their clothes also covered in black stains.

A worker present here said that since there are no residential buildings nearby, no one faces health problems as we follow safety procedures during work.

Explaining the waste-to-fuel process, Mehmood said that he would soon upgrade his unit to an electric-powered safe tank instead of a wood-burning fire.

Ahmed Halis, director of Gaza's National Institute for Environment and Development, fears environmental destruction from this unregulated industry.

Ahmad Halis has stated that this method of obtaining fuel is extremely harmful to the workers here, mainly due to the toxic fumes they inhale.

According to the United Nations Environment Programme, burning of plastic releases dioxins and other toxic gases which are extremely dangerous for flora, fauna and human health.

Ahmed Halis has also revealed the danger of petroleum hydrocarbons in burning plastic in this way, saying that the tank used for this work is a kind of time bomb that can explode due to heat.