Recently, I attended a Community Lecture organized by the EEG on the topic ?Green Municipal Infrastructure-Practices from Abu Dhabi Municipality?. This lecture dealt on the green ways which an institution such as a municipality can adopt to safeguard the future of the city, emirate, country and even the whole world.

This lecture was given by Mr. Khalid, who hopped in at the last moment, because the scheduled speaker could not make it on time. Nevertheless, Mr. Khalid was able to present the same in a very efficient manner.

He started off by telling us that tourists are attracted to any city on the basis of two things- The community and the infrastructure. The Abu Dhabi Municipality?s sustainability team ensures that the infrastructure is maintained in a green way. They believe that major economic structural improvement is an asset for the country. Mr. Khalid told us that they have invested $2,000,000,000,000 till 2015 for the green infrastructural development. It is a very hefty sum, but the returns are amazing. How? I?ll tell you.

Because, According to the Environmental Agency of Abu Dhabi, This cost is known as social cost and returns 5% more returns every year. If their infrastructure is sustainable, it will benefit in the long run, while other emirates will have to keep refurbishing it once in every few years.  Some of the implemented plans for sustainable infrastructure are:

1.       Geo-Grid:- This is a grid made of geo-synthetic material which distributes the stress caused by the heavy traffic on the roads if this grid is placed beneath the coal tar.(Take a look at the first picture to see what it looks like). It also increases safety as it reduces cracks. 

            Cold In-Place Pavement Recycling:-Now this was something completely new. A Vehicle Passes over the Road, and slowly crumbles each and every bit of it. Then while it is still passing over, it melts the components with very hot air and adds some chemicals which are supplied to it with from a vehicle behind it through a pipeline. Finally, it levels the pavement, thus recycling it completely automatically and instantly. Cool!

3.       Recycled Crushed Aggregates(RCA):- In Bani-Yas, roads that cannot be In-place recycled, are crushed and then sent to the factory at Bani Yas in Abu Dhabi, to come out as fresh material for building new roads. This crushed aggregate lasts for years according to them. So basically, they make sure that if the roads become worn out, they are definitely recycled.

4.       Public Lighting:- They have converted all the street lights in Abu Dhabi which were full of CFL bulbs to all LEDs. Again, the cost vs returns debate comes into the point of view. LEDs have amazing returns as compared to their cost. They replaced more than 320,000 poles and made the lighting in Abu Dhabi, efficient, sufficient and sustainable.

In a nutshell, I got to learn a lot about the functioning of the Abu Dhabi as I live in Sharjah and about their many sustainability practices. All in all, it was a very fruitful experience learning something new as usual on this amazing platform.