The Kuwait Environment Protection Society participated in the 39th Annual Environmental Training Conference held in San Diego, California, USA. The conference is organized annually by the Industrial Environmental Association (IEA), a non-profit organization serving manufacturing companies in Southern California. The IEA advocates on behalf of the industry to influence legislation and facilitate environmental compliance for member companies through education and training. The conference brought together local and regional organizations and companies concerned with innovative modern solutions to environmental problems.
Engineer Youssef Al-Ramzi, a founding member and official spokesperson for the Environmental Engineers Team in the Association, confirmed that “the conference focused mainly on the problems of water scarcity and air quality in some cities in Los Angeles, California, highlighting the Public Utilities Department, which announced the start of the first phase of reusing wastewater after it has been carefully treated through the (reverse osmosis) technology instead of discharging it into the sea.
M. Al-Ramzi added, “Some companies presented during the conference technological development mechanisms for treating water to make it potable at lower costs,” stressing that “the environmental problems addressed by the conference are somewhat similar to the problems that the State of Kuwait is exposed to, such as understanding the mechanism for reusing wastewater to make it potable by treating it before public use, which saves money,” noting that “some of the workshops included in the conference also focused on the issue of water treatment with modern and advanced technological systems.
He considered that “addressing the problem of air quality was done by developing safety standards by focusing on particles with a diameter of 2.5 microns instead of particles of 10 microns that are more suitable for the nature of the state. This came as a result of scientific research that found that air pollution in the state of California was mostly in particles of 2.5 microns, which led to health damage to the respiratory system of the population.” He added, “The problems and damages resulting from air pollution were understood, and the proposed solutions were discussed, including developing and strengthening filters and purifiers in factories that release harmful smokes and gases.”.
He pointed out that “one of the most prominent proposals discussed addressed reducing the winds that carry air pollution due to the deterioration of vegetation cover in the state of California, which leads to an increase in the desert area, especially since it has been exposed to scattered, multiple and frequent fires,” considering that the State of Kuwait is similar in its desert land to the state of California, stressing the importance of increasing vegetation cover in the country through strategic agriculture and windbreaks that hinder and reduce the strength of the winds that carry dust in the State of Kuwait.
Al-Ramzi stressed that “such training conferences should have a similar version in the region to focus on environmental issues that intersect with the industrial and commercial sector in our Gulf and Arab region.”.
