Kudos to FieldCore’s field services team at PP9 combined cycle power plant in Saudi Arabia for initiating (and conscientiously supporting) an initiative to help reduce unexpected environmental impact which is an indirect result of COVID-19.
The use of plastic water bottles instead of water dispensers (encouraged as part of COVID-19 prevention measures at customer sites) has given rise to excess plastic waste. To minimize this ecological imprint, FieldCore’s outage team at PP9 (about an hour’s drive east of the country’s capital, Riyadh) is following a committed recycling program on site which had been mooted by one of the site crew.
The idea to set up a collection point to facilitate recycling during the ongoing outage is the brainchild of FieldCore Generator Specialist Mohammed Al-Hubaihsi. Volunteerism has always been in his veins, and since university days he has been involved in projects to care for our planet. According to Mohammed’s ballpark estimations the planned 40-day major inspection of a generator and turbine at the customer plant could conservatively produce 8,800 empty bottles – and this reckons only the FieldCore site team of nearly 50.
With the help of FieldCore’s scaffolding contractor, a 2×2 meter box has been erected at an easily accessible point. It did not take long before other contractors and the customer site team joined support for the project to help care for the environment and started throwing empty bottles in the box..
The box is almost full and Mohammed has already arranged with a local non-profit waste management company to collect the plastic waste once the outage is completed.
He says it is “super encouraging” how dedicated everyone is to help protect the environment by making sure they dump the empty water bottles in the make-shift collection bin.
