Ms. Shirzady, One of the Elite Women in Iran and National premier Entrepreneur Talks about Her Concerns to Preserve Water, Air and Soil in Iran
We Can Not Import Environment!
There are people who have particular principles, follow them seriously and speak based on statistics, facts and figures. Haide Shirzady Gilani has such this personality, whose her prejudice to her homeland is one of her principles and this love made her to start modern waste management for the first time in Iran by herself alone, esp. when "Protecting Environment" was an unfamiliar term.
We were hosting someone whose her youth was concurrent the war between Iran and Iraq and effects of living in Kermanshah made her a real warrior; someone who has been selected as Premier Entrepreneur, Lady Elite of Iran, Favorite woman for National Environment Award and etc.; someone whose her most valuable characteristic is her diligence after inherent kindness, esp. when she stays in the office until 6 pm in holidays or weekends and do her researches, while have an appointment for the next day at 8 am completely ready and full of energy.
"I went to offices, so that many governments and managers made me prohibited to enter", said Shirzady ", but I always found ways to entre and presented my plans and suggestions."
Few months ago when she went to Kermanshah Municipality, suggested that should do something while Supreme Leader had named this year as "Measure and Action Year". The result was that Kermanshah Municipality selected "Respect To Earth" as a motto for this year, and in an accurate environmental plan every 3 weeks a group by managing of Haide Shirzady will cleanse all suburbs in Kermanshah (from waste and rubble).
But getting attention and cooperation of Municipality was not easy at all. While today Kermanshah Municipality can recycle 100% of urban waste with cooperation of Shirzady, using her ideas and working of the company is because of the time that she has passed to talk with those governments who mostly did not understand her means. "Iran has been in transition on to efficiency for 30 years, and all of my problems is this," said Shirzady ", Iran power efficiency ranking was 145 of 148 in competitiveness report, and it means that experts are not in proper place. If governments and managers were in their scientific place, accepting technologies would be easy, because they could decide on choosing scientific technology. "Shirzady explained that all of those were due to her love and obligation to Iran - Zamin", I always had an album and showed real photos to governments, and they always reacted negatively and said I packed up my things open again". Of course now she has a tablet to present her documents.
From Childhood to Youth
The origin of all these attempts returns to her childhood, adolescence and the way she grew up: a girl from Kalhor Tribe who her postfix of family name were changed from Kalhor to Gilani due to mandatory rules, however she is proud of her family name.
Gilan means "Grandees City". She is the 8th child with 6 sisters and 2 brothers and grew up with love and kindness. Father was so warm-hearted and high-minded who trained his daughters to be proud of themselves and not to be ashamed, while on that time having daughter was not known as glory or honor.
Gilan-Gharb City was in a complete dead end, end of the country had been connected to the world in recent years and in the war time the road to this city was being asphalted.
Our story girl received her birth card (or certification card) 3 years elder and when finished her primary school was only 10 years. She wanted to continue her education, but this city did not have any high school. As she said, on that time she had sent many letters to Governor and Education Office, but did not have any result. She finally could continue her high school in Islam-Abad-Gharb and received her diploma. After that was Sepahi-Danesh (Literacy Corps) course, and finally when she was only 17 could go to villages as a teacher for 2 years until Iran Revolution.
Revolution changes especially in official systems were fast, so that she could not match herself with those conditions although she was always ready for the future. She was still learning which way should follow that was stopped from teaching and continuing her education. She loved her job and after complaint and objection (and follow up) finally started her job as a teacher again, but this time in the cold weather in the tent under the snow and rain, her citizens had to immigrate to the mountain due to the war. But after this short time she was stopped from her job again because received an order based on that her job was temporary.
She was sure that situation would not be like that forever. "My studies were vast. I read history, lives of worriers and heroes, and knew all of those limitations were temporary would not be so severe forever", said Shirzady.
From Tribe to Germany
Haide returned back to Gilan-Gharb while was thinking to create a job for herself, so didn’t need any governmental permission and made a sewing workshop. Although all these thoughts, she still wanted to continue her education and social activities, "That was true that I couldn’t continue my education in Iran, but I could go abroad."
But going to abroad needed an invitation or so much money, and family was not in a good condition due to the war, "it was war and most people were farmer and none of our lands were remained unused." At last she chose India because it was cheap and near. Her father was dead recently and her older brother who was teacher and had another economical income source except farming was her only adviser and made her sure to provide her, and finally Haide could receive acceptance of Indian university.
The long queue of India Embassy made fundamental changes in her life again. When she wanted to check the currency price, saw a bolt in Germany Embassy: "A 2-month touristy visa with money". After that, her brother paid all costs and Haide went to Germany.
In there she understood because her diploma was Technical and Professional degree didn’t have international validity. So application for refuge was one way to take residence, but while many Iranians wanted to asylum, Haide refused to do that. She was sure that wanted to return back to Iran after her education. After many difficulties, she could take visa for German language and finish her high-school, and after much insistence with German officials took her educational visa for agriculture from Kassel University in Hessen without being refuge.
Kassel University was pioneer in permanent agriculture science and modern energies, and was the first environmental faculty in Germany. Of course the organic waste separation plan was done in this university for the first time in the world. After visiting from waste recycling system and learning about different plans for this system, Shirzady decided to follow this way besides agriculture.
Learning about this world process beside her love for farming and environment made her to experience agriculture as this modern and scientific method in her country. She also married with her classmate with condition of coming back to Iran.
The unpleasant view of urban waste in suburbs was annoying for her. She knew that for permanent agriculture should use composting fertilizer (from recycling), so concentrated her researches on recycling and composting fertilizer, and assigned her PHD thesis on matching recycling methods in developed countries with developing countries like Iran.
Kermanshah the First City without Any Waste
Because Shirzady needed to complete her information and knowledge to assure government with a more scientific way, so came back to Germany and completed her education in Ecology PHD. She came to Iran for 2 months and follow up her plans and came back to Germany for few months regularly. By the introduction of Reforms, she decided to present her plan again to the new mayor. This time the mayor evaluated her plans and after different meetings and programming, Haide Shirzady established "Recycling and Composting Kermanshah Company, RCK Co." which has been the first and most modern recycling company in Iran, for the first time she started up the training plan for waste separation in a most consistent way and also mechanization of waste collecting and recycling system in Kermanshah.
Now in recent years 100% of Kermanshah waste has been recycled, one part is become to compost fertilizer and bio-compost, one part to recycling materials and another part is used as RDF (Refuse Derived Fuels) for cement factories. Shirzady has a 51% as shareholder of waste management company too, and in total these two companies have made job opportunities for more than 1000 people. Shirzady believes that entrepreneurship is an essential work, and although at earlier years she has never tended to make money or revenue, this subject is known as a prophecy and obligation for her.
She still has many concerns and wishes to improve this situation and worry about tires, electronics, constructional, industrial and hospital waste which their recycling is at first steps and landfill or incineration can have catastrophic environmental effects. Her other plan is producing polymer from plastic materials, "I cannot protect this country alone," said Sirzady," although I may not see that day there will be no problem, when see people like Prof. Samiei who works hardly at age of 80 , tell myself I can too , and still have time."
The scientific situation is also one of her concerns, "We have environmental universities and outstanding teachers who should do practical plans instead of staying at universities."
The Difference Is In Hearts
Because she is a woman, Shirzady never make a difference between herself and her colleagues, and said "What that makes people different is in their hearts and minds, not about their genders". She believes that with each specialty, proficiency or gender, we should trust on ourselves and act as an expert to be succeeded.
Her pattern is Persian literary and poems treasures which are always inspiring her, "Knowledge is power", and each country which has knowledge will be strong and young. The last decade in Europe was known as knowledge age, while we have had this belief for thousands years. Her researches show that we produce more than 50 thousand tons of waste per day and 16 million tons annually, that each tone is 3 m3 (cubic meters) of space and this means we produce waste as the size of Damavand mountain each year which will be caused about 50 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions and 60 million m3 of latex and emulsion.
She also referred to the leadership charter about the environment in last year which has not been taken seriously so far by governments. She said: "This technology and system cannot have any revenue by itself. Like other costs citizen should pay for waste recycling, too. It should be assigned from oil part. In targeted subsides plan, if these subsides were stored, we would have most modern recycling and waste management system." Of course she believes that the role of training, cultural changing and national decision (or impetus) can be effective and experts or private sector should have more cooperation. At the end, like all of her speeches and meetings she said "We can import all things with oil money, but not about Environment. We cannot import clean air, lakes or fertile/ and rich soil, so be serious about preserving our Environment."
