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Water bottles are widely used in the Gulf countries. One estimate indicates that the water bottle usage in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) may reach up to 250 L of water per person annually. Generally, the water bottles are made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a recyclable material. Because of the non-availability of a powerful incentive system, these recyclable water bottles are often disposed of in landfills. This paper proposes a feasibility study of building a Deposit–Refund System (DRS) to encourage the closed-loop recycling of 0.5 L PET water bottles in the UAE waste disposal system. Water bottles are collected by a reverse vending machine (RVM) and recycled to produce PET bottles, and the proposed system will reward consumers with 0.04 United Arab Emirates Dirham (AED) per deposited water bottle. Additionally, this study calculates the cost of 100% virgin polyethylene terephthalate (vPET) and 60% recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET) bottles based on the UAE population, data obtained from local water bottle companies, and existing research. Adopting this DRS will cut down on waste, protect the environment, improve the manufacturing process of water bottles, and boost the local economy.

According to studies on global plastic manufacturing and the resulting pollution, plastic wastes have been identified as a serious environmental concern. The impact of plastic garbage on marine species, humans, and the environment is a source of public concern, necessitating the need to save ecosystems and the lives that depend on them. Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) water bottles have a significant carbon footprint and represent tremendous waste. In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), PET water bottles are widely utilized, with yearly consumption reaching 450 water bottles per person. This study aims to review the literature on using PET water bottles in the UAE. A systematic literature search was conducted on journal articles, peer-reviewed journal articles, etc., published in the last 12 months. The main aspects of this systematic literature review include information on how plastic wastes are managed in the UAE and worldwide. In addition, it discusses the public health effects caused by plastic wastes, how the consumers of plastic bottles responded to the environmental policies, and so on. The article selection criteria included studies related to plastic water bottles in the UAE, waste management, environmental consequences, etc. A total of 30 articles were selected by initial screening, and 20 met the selection criteria and were included in the final review. To establish the credibility of this research, we understood that it was necessary to survey the UAE population to see the best approach to deal with PET water bottles.

Due to the rise in waste, both developed and developing countries’ municipal solid waste (MSW) disposal systems are overburdened. The increased inflow of used plastic water bottles has rendered the situation difficult. Plastic usage in several forms is becoming indispensable in daily life, despite its harmful effects on humans and animals in general. Government bodies are eager to cut plastic usage in several forms, but the manufacturing costs and selling prices make it difficult to replace plastic with materials that are safe for living bodies. One such problem lies in the form of the water bottle. The use of plastic in water bottles is much more common in Gulf countries because of their geographical position and the scarcity of potable water. The large amount of plastic waste created by used water bottles is a very critical issue, as it has a severe environmental effect and is a hurdle in efforts to foster sustainable development and green initiatives. The present research undertook an empirical investigation on plastic waste issues, environmental concerns, and various mitigating initiatives. It further investigated the waste management system using closed-loop recycling for water bottles as an efficient means of managing MSW and protecting the environment in the UAE. A survey was initiated and distributed among the UAE population to study the feasibility of building such a system. The responses to the plastic waste issue and mitigating solutions were found to be encouraging. The statistical analysis showed a higher mean value of up to 4.47 on the 5-point Likert scale.

Diffuse nitrate (NO₃ − ) contamination is a critical environmental concern threatening the quality of coastal groundwater resources, particularly in regions undergoing agricultural intensification and rapid land use changes. This study presents an explainable deep learning framework for predicting nitrate concentrations and identifying areas at risk of elevated contamination. The framework integrates key hydrochemical parameters electrical conductivity (EC), chloride (Cl − ), organic matter (OM), and fecal coliforms (FC) with remote-sensing derived indicators, including the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and land use/land cover (LU/LC). Two deep learning models were evaluated in this study: a Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) and TabNet, a novel attention-based architecture for interpretable tabular data. TabNet outperformed MLP, achieving an overall accuracy of 81.60% and a Macro-averaged recall of 84.13%, while providing transparent feature attribution. LASSO regression identified FC (0.52) and EC (0.48) as dominant predictors, highlighting the combined influence of domestic wastewater and agricultural runoff on nitrate contamination. The output risk maps revealed spatially heterogeneous contamination patterns, with hotspots concentrated in agricultural and peri-urban areas. This research highlights the importance of integrating explainable AI with geospatial analysis to guide targeted groundwater monitoring and management strategies. This approach is transferable to other vulnerable coastal aquifers, supporting sustainable groundwater governance under diffuse pollution conditions.

Most Arabs can read text written in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). However, to easily express themselves, they may find it easier to switch to informal (colloquial) Arabic. The web is open for anyone to express him/herself freely, and people are expressing themselves through many social media platforms, such as blogs and forums increasingly in their native colloquies. Search engines are very good at handling queries in MSA, though not as good if the query is written in colloquial Arabic. Two issues will be addressed in this paper. First, many younger generation Arabs find it hard to write in MSA, which means that many results are missed due to improperly posted queries; and second, a query written in MSA will not retrieve documents written in colloquial Arabic. Thus, with the goal of universal accessibility of the web to all Arabic users, we need a successful mechanism that translates the query back and forth between MSA and the variety of colloquies spread throughout the Arab countries. As a case study, we investigate one of the local dialects in Saudi Arabia, a leading country in social media usage much of which is in colloquial language. We present a web information retrieval system for Arabic that addresses this concern. To test the proposed method, we compiled a corpus of over fourteen hundred documents and measured the performance of our system using 50 sample queries achieving an average recall and precision of 93.4 and 83.6%, respectively.