A plan to expand a recycling scheme might seem an unlikely source of controversy in Cairo, where waste often accumulates in alleys, canals and vacant lots.
But it became one late last month, when two machines that offer phone credit in exchange for empty bottles and cans appeared in a middle-class district, drawing the ire of a community that has collected much of the Egyptian capital’s refuse by hand for almost a century.
While the dispute has since cooled, it highlighted the fraught politics of waste collection in a city of more than 20 million people, where informal networks and small-scale enterprise have long filled gaps left by business and the state.
One such network is that of the “zabaleen”, rubbish collectors mostly from Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority, who go door-to-door through Cairo’s labyrinthine streets, gathering refuse before transporting it to sorting sites across the megacity.
Their system has been lauded by academics and environmentalists for being more efficient than those in many wealthier countries.
It has also, occasionally, come under threat, as appeared to be the case when the two machines were set up in Dokki, west of downtown Cairo.
Similar machines have been installed for years in universities, private clubs, malls and gated compounds outside Cairo. But those are places where the zabaleen rarely operate, and they saw the expansion of the scheme as a threat.
A local official soon found himself clashing on live television with Shehata El-Moqaddas, head of the zabaleen syndicate.
“Where are the zabaleen in what you’ve done?” Moqaddas said.
PLAN TO SCALE UP RECYCLING MACHINES
Cairo lacks a cohesive waste management system, meaning rubbish often accumulates in informal dumpsites or is burned, contributing to air pollution. Academic research has estimated that the zabaleen may collect about half the city’s waste, recycling some 80% of that.
The machines placed in Dokki were built by ZeroPrime Technologies, founded by 40-year-old entrepreneur Eslam El-Refaey.
The idea, presented in 2023 on Egypt’s version of “Shark Tank” — a reality TV show in which aspiring entrepreneurs pitch business ideas to investors — was inspired by watching people scavenge for rubbish, he said.
Early funding came from private startup accelerators but the business is now self-financing, with profit margins of 30% to 40%, Refaey said. He plans to deploy 20,000 machines nationwide by 2030.
The problem for Moqaddas was not the technology. It was the apparent exclusion of the zabaleen, who he said would be deprived of work.
“If they introduced helicopters to collect garbage in Egypt, I’d be happy,” he said. “I’m upset that the garbage collectors weren’t integrated into this system.”
After the dispute went public, the Giza governorate, where Dokki is located, agreed that the zabaleen could empty the machines’ contents themselves, paying ZeroPrime for the contents, Moqaddas said.
Mohamed Marei, secretary-general and spokesman for Giza governorate, said the dispute was being resolved and that they would work on integrating the zabaleen.
‘INDISPENSABLE’ ROLE
Previous waste reforms in Cairo have foundered, including a high-profile push in the early 2000s to bring in foreign firms that also faced opposition from the zabaleen.
Many have been too piecemeal and failed to integrate the full waste chain, industry figures say.
“They all need to be working together: the consumer who handles the bottle, the person collecting it, and the person recycling it,” said Amin Salama, who runs private recycling company Innovix.
Wael Fahmi, a professor at Cairo’s Capital University, compared the position of the zabaleen to that of residents in informal housing cleared to make way for lucrative property developments. Arguments that they are “backward” could be used as a pretext to “appropriate” the valuable waste they process, he said.
Former environment minister Laila Iskandar says reforms should formalise the zabaleen rather than replace them, as she has tried to do in her own work in government and the private sector.
“No one looks at the full picture,” she Said.
In one recent modernisation push, a new facility northeast of Cairo aims to process up to 15,000 tons of waste a day in an effort to help make “the entire chain work efficiently together,” said Hisham Osman, a senior environmental engineer at the World Bank, which is funding the project.
A World Bank impact study says it would focus on heavy and hazardous waste in an area north of central Cairo.
The zabaleen have endured many challenges since migrants from southern Egypt first entered the trade in the 1940s, including repeated evictions and the culling of their pigs during the 2009 swine flu pandemic.
“We’ve lived through many governments and many presidents,” Moqaddas said. “The state works with us. Why? Because the state feels we’re indispensable.”
(Reporting by Mohamed Ezz)
