Hiiba on Dubai Eye: Why the UAE Is Ready for a Reuse Revolution
Hiiba co-founder Jérôme Viricel joins Dubai Eye 103.8 to discuss the UAE reuse revolution, why most discarded items are not broken, and how the app works.
In the media · Dubai Eye 103.8 · 11 June 2026
Just days after launching on World Environment Day, Hiiba co-founder Jérôme Viricel joined Tom Urquhart on Dubai Eye 103.8’s Business Breakfast. They talked about the problem Hiiba was built to solve, the community already forming around it, and why the UAE might be the right place for a reuse revolution.
You can listen to the full conversation above. Here is what stood out.
The problem worth talking about
A lot of what we throw away still works. It is not broken, just unwanted. Jérôme put it simply on air:
“Most things people throw away are not broken. They are simply in the wrong place.”
The UAE makes this easy to see. The country is home to roughly 9.3 million expats and one of the highest relocation rates in the world. People arrive, move between apartments, and leave again, and a constant flow of furniture, appliances, and household items moves with them. Much of it is still useful. A lot of it ends up in a skip.
The waste numbers tell the same story. The UAE produces around 220,000 tonnes of textile waste every year, and close to 88 percent of it still goes to landfill, according to the country’s new Naseej textile circularity initiative. Clothes, furniture, and home goods are not running out. They are being discarded faster than they are being passed on.
For the bigger picture, we wrote about why reuse matters more than ever in the UAE.
How Hiiba works
The interview walked through the whole experience. You download the app, browse free items near you, message a neighbour, and arrange a pickup. No price tags. No haggling. No awkward back-and-forth over a used bookshelf.
To keep things fair, Hiiba uses Eco Reward (ERW) points. Give something away and you earn points. Adopt something and you spend them. It rewards generosity and keeps the community balanced, so the people who give the most always have access to what they need.
This is what sets Hiiba apart from classifieds and marketplace apps. As Jérôme told Tom:
“Nothing is for sale. That’s the big difference.”
If you are setting up a home on a budget, that difference is real. We put together a guide on how to find free furniture and home items in the UAE that shows how it works in practice.
Beyond recycling: preventing waste before it starts
Part of the conversation was about a shift in how the UAE thinks about sustainability. Recycling deals with things once they have already become waste. Reuse steps in earlier, before an item is thrown out at all. It is the reason the order has always been reduce, reuse, recycle.
Hiiba sits at that earlier point. Instead of breaking something down to recover a fraction of its materials, it keeps the whole item in use, in someone’s home, doing the job it was made for. That is a quieter kind of sustainability, and often a more practical one.
A movement already underway
What came through most in the interview is that this is not a far-off idea. It is happening now, in real homes, across real neighbourhoods. The launch on World Environment Day was a starting point, and the community has been growing since.
The UAE has the ingredients for it: a young, mobile population, a strong culture of generosity, and real appetite for doing things better. Hiiba is built to give that energy somewhere to go.
Join the community
Want to give, adopt, or just explore what is available in your area? Download the Hiiba app at hiiba.ae and join the community.
Follow along on Instagram, and tune in to Dubai Eye 103.8 for more conversations on business and sustainability in the UAE.
