Colour-coded recycling bins have been installed at strategic drop-off locations throughout the facility, with solar-powered backlit display panels allowing the latest environmental campaign issues to be displayed.
The first campaign highlights the hazardous nature of plastic, over 8m tonnes of which is estimated to enter oceans from land each year.
Sohar Port ceo Mark Geilenkirchen explains that plastic is a collective term for a variety of synthetic polymers with variable material properties, including density, some of which are denser than seawater and sink when they enter the ocean.
“This is not simply an aesthetic problem,” he says. “We know these materials break down over time to create so-called micro-plastics that are ingested by fish and other marine organisms and can then easily enter the human food chain.”
Separately, Sohar Port is firming up plans for its Innovation Zone, which it describes as the world’s first self-sustaining free zone cluster, which will be “unconnected to the power grid, the Zone will create its own energy and recycle its own waste.”