Proceedings of the International Conference on Sustainable Solid Waste Management,

5 - 7 September 2007, Chennai, India. pp.490-497

Recycling the Rejects of the Rejects; Protection of the Environment

and Poverty Alleviation by Job Creation to Youth
Syada Greiss1, Yousriya Loza Sawiris1, Salah El Haggar1,2,
Soahir Mourad3 and Yasmine Mohamed Negm1
1

The Association for the Protection of the Environment, Qala Cairo, Egypt.
Email: suziegreiss@egyptpsu.com, Email: yousriya@orascom.com, yasmine@orascom.com
2
Energy and Environment at the American University in Cairo. Email: Elhaggar@aucegypt.edu
3
Khattameya Site (Presenter on behalf of the team) Email: Sohair_mourad@yahoo.com
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Egypt contains an area of 1 001 450 sq km, but only 2.8 % is arable land. Its terrain consist mainly of a
vast desert plateau interrupted by the Nile valley and delta. The current environmental issues are agricultural land being lost to urbanization and windblown sand as well as raw sewage, industrial effluents
and pollution through waste (CIA, 2005). The rapid growth in population and the high unemployment
rate, the labor force of 20.7 (2004) million out of 77.5 inhabitants (2005) are also pressing issues. 43.9
% are living from less than 2 $ a day and adult illiteracy is above 44.4 % (HDR, 2005).
The Association for the Protection of the Environment, A.P.E, founded 1984, is a private voluntary
organization that is legally registered with the ministry of social affairs. Its aim is to combine
effective waste management and recycling technology with improvements in the standard of living of
garbage collectors and their communities. Its headquarters is in the Moqattam area of Cairo and has
two other branches and committees in the area of Torah and Kattameya. A.P.E's environmental policy
may be characterized as providing an economically viable solution for one of Egypt's main
environmental problems while simultaneously creating jobs for members of the garbage collectors'
communities and recycling as much as possible of collected solid waste.
A.P.E.s main approach pursued in the process of developing the garbage collectors community and
the environment has been inclined towards income generating activities and it included concepts of
welfare, equity, anti-poverty, and efficiency. A.P.E. aims at protecting the environment particularly
in relation to solid waste management and human resources development. Its aim is to empower the
most vulnerable groups like women and children through providing them with education, literacy,
income generation, preventive health care, crises management, leadership training and personality
development. Its methods are guided by the principles of community participation and sustainable
development (Assad and Garas,1993, 94).
2.0 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE GARBAGE COLLECTORS COMMUNITY IN
EGYPT
The garbage collectors are descendants of subsistence farmers who started emigrating from Upper
Egypt in the 1940s, searching for better economic opportunities. There were two waves of migration,
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Wahiya who emigrated 100 years ago from the Western desert of Egypt and the other poorer
Zabbaleen who emigrated 50 years ago from Upper Egypt.
Many of them could not find shelter and settled on land owned by the government, and some even
settled in cemeteries. They were evicted several times until they finally formed squatter settlements on
the edge of Cairo metropolis. Their last eviction was from Imbaba area in Cairo from where they
moved to Moqattam in the 1970s. In order to resume their economic activities after the move and
without tenure security, they hastily built tin shacks to live in. Though during this constant threat of
eviction and to earn a livelihood, the Zabbaleen have been rendering a vital and crucial service to the
city of Cairo, by collecting garbage in Cairos neighborhoods using donkey carts and soon established
a highly organized system of informal collections routes.

Photo 1 Illustrate the Garbage Collectors before A.P.Es Activities in Torah

Initially, the economic survival of the Zabbaleen was dependent primarily on food scraps hand-picked
from the garbage they collected, pigs raised on the fodder they bought from Wahiya, and the sale of
the material they sorted from the collected garbage. However, the visible poverty along with the
multitude of environmental and health related problems associated with garbage collection has
attracted a host of service agencies.
3.0 A.P.E.S HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
A.P.E.s activities started in Moqattam area in 1986 with the establishment of the compost plant.
Previously the manure from the pigs was simply piled up on the streets. Today the plant is located in
Kattameya and the compost is in great demand throughout Egypt. In 1988 and 1991 rag and paper
recycling units were established. The cottage industry specifically targeted women and they became
part of a learn and earn program, which also taught health, social, educational and economic skills,
because A.P.E. wanted to empower the women of the community, not just employ them. Additional
centers were set up to take care of children while their mothers worked as well as to provide a safe
environment for community children in general (Walker and Wendy, 2005).
In the 1990s A.P.E. decided to upgrade the Torah settlement which is also an area of garbage
collectors. Prior to A.P.E.s initiatives, Torah lacked the suitable infrastructure (electricity, sewage
etc.). The area also had no public services, such as a police station, fire bridge, schools, hospitals,
telephones, or veterinary unit though the area had over 13.000 animals.
This had led to the spread of diseases of both humans and animals. A.P.E. decided to follow the same
pattern as in Moqattam through developing the area of garbage collectors in Torah and establishing
the Developed Center for collection, sorting and recycling of garbage in Kattameya.
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Photo 2 Illustrate the 2nd Generation of the Garbage Collectors in Moqattam

Photo 3 Represent Torah eefore A.P.Es Activities

Garbage collectors would live now in a housing area allocated especially for them whereas the
garbage is transferred to a remote area away from the urban community (A.P.E.s Kattameya site, 19
km away from their housing area). It is the first pilot project that combines raising health, economic
and environmental levels of the garbage collectors on one hand and developing solid waste
management and protecting the environment from pollution on the other.
The developed recycling center in Kattameya also includes a cultural center for workers who wanted
to learn and earn so that they could benefit developmentally as well as economically. While
A.P.E.s primary goal has been to improve the lives and the livelihoods of the garbage collecting
community, the approach that it took encompassed far more than just practical help and resulted in
something that is often missing once outside help leaves sustainability. In acting as an intermediary
between the Zabbaleen and critical resources in the public sector, A.P.E. volunteers became
emotionally and physically invested in the zabbaleen communities. That investment, which made
human development the main objective, advanced the goal for long-term sustainability by providing
the communities they served with the communication and leadership skills they needed for personal
development (Ford KC, 2003). In addition, it was that same emotional and physical involvement that
helped A.P.E. successfully alter the mind-set of the Zabbaleen when it later became necessary for
them to be separated from their garbage activities.

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Photo 4 Represent Torah after A.P.Es Activities

4.0 THE GARBAGE COLLECTORS AFTER A.P.E.S ACTIVITIES

A.P.E. has succeeded in the integration of community services with productive employment, the
social with the economic, the traditional with the modern, so as to target women and men, the young
and the working age. In addition, it has involved formal business and its technical assistance so as to
connect the informal with the up to date technologies to link products with real markets and modify
managerial skills into the simplest of micro operations. A.P.E. has also enhanced the process of
participation of the grassroots so as to ensure that their voices in expressing their preferences, their
ownership in immobilizing physical and human resources and their welfare in distributing the burdens
and rewards to the collective efforts are heard. A.P.E has indulged in the above three processes
through the following:
From organic garbage to compost gross sale, yearly half a million pounds on average.
From young illiterate girls perched on garbage carts into young working staff and private small
entrepreneurs that number 360 girl, some of them familiar with the computer and the internet.
Relocating the garbage collected from residence into the desert of Kattameya for the recycling of
90%.
Training the second generation of garbage collectors to own a recycling machine become a small
industrialist.

Photo 5 Represent Women in Moqattam and Kattameya Working in Rag and Plastic Recycling

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5.0 A.P.E.S BOARD & ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE

There are nine volunteers who are members of the board, identified for their specific expertise in areas
such of health, education, environment, social development and financial management. In addition to
about 53 non-paid volunteers, A.P.E. works with a further 400 staff members who are involved in
various projects. For example, there are approximately 250 women and girls in the rag recycling
project, 50 in the paper recycling project, 30 young women in primary health care and 50 young men
participating in the composting and separation at source projects, as well as in administrative and
other support activities. Attached is the chart illustrating the staffs position in the three areas.
6.0 FUNDING
Most of the projects of A.P.E., such as the compost, rag recycling, patchwork, paper recycling and
outlets, after receiving the initial grant, become self-sustainable. A.P.E. receives grants from different
international organizations. Below is a list of the donors as of 2005:
Orascom Construction Company: It constructed the Torah clinic and all the building of Kattameya
site.
The Japanese Embassy in Cairo: donated the fees for the construction and the equipments of the
outlets for recycling of plastics.
The Arab Contractors: supported A.P.E. with a water facility.
British Gas: direct donation to Moqattam area.
Apache: direct donation to Moqattam area.
The British Embassy in Cairo: direct donation to the children club in Moqattam.
Ceramica Cleopatra: furnished bathrooms of Kattameya site.
Mantrac Company: discounted the prices of two loaders bought by Kattameya.
Mobica Company: furnished the Kattameya site.
El Ezz Steel Company: donated all the steel needed for construction of Kattameya site.
El Shobokshy Company: donated all the cement needed for constructing the Kattameya site.
Prince Waleed Bin Talal: direct donation for the Mother and Child Center in Torah.
The Ford Foundation-Cairo Office: donated the costs of the basic survey and study done in the
process of upgrading Torah.
UNESCO: direct donation to Moqattam.
National Council of Negro Women: donated the equipments needed for Kattameya site.
B.T.M: donated the machines for cloths production unit in Kattameya site.
Kema Organization: helped in the education and literacy initiative at A.P.E.
7.0 PROJECT DESCRIPTION: THE REJECTS OF THE REJECTS UNIT
The disposal problem of municipal solid wastes has been growing in the last decades in all the
developing countries resulting in more incineration, land filling, and open dumping of wastes.
However, as the volume of plastic waste increased, legal restrictions were imposed on these disposal
methods, making recycling the only practical alternative. Despite the high costs associated with the
sorting and separation of plastics, the A.P.E. assisted the garbage collectors community in developing
new ways to recycle plastics in such a way as to transform post-consumer waste to a usable raw

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material. Although plastic recycling contributes to a significant reduction of the waste in need of final
disposal, it results in the utilization of only about 80 percent of the total quantity of plastics. We refer
to the remaining 20 percent as the rejects of the rejects. Those 20% accounts for 13,200 ton/year of
non-recyclable mixed plastic waste in Cairo (El Haggar et al, 2001) and they have traditionally been
dumped in open dumpsites in the deserts, often burning up and producing noxious fumes. The
residues that remain constitute an important source of soil and water contamination. To find a
reasonable solution to the problem of the rejects of the rejects the Egyptian environmental authorities
specifically have failed so far.
The mixed plastics that result from the recycling of compost are called the rejects of the rejects
because they cannot be economically recycled for a number of economic and technological reasons.
If plastics can be sorted into homogeneous polymers they can be easily used as a substitute for virgin
resins. However, the sorting process results in a residual of mixed plastics that cannot be further
sorted. Because these mixed plastics are made up of a variety of resins, recycling these mixed plastics
results in the loss of the chemical and physical properties of the raw materials. The plastics recycling
process requires different processing temperatures, further complicating the recycling of mixed
plastics.
A number of attempts were made to advance the recycling technology of mixed plastic wastes. For
example, Northwestern University has developed a polymer reclamation process in which the waste
materials are converted into pastel-colored powder. The American Plastics Council has also succeeded
in recycling the heterogeneous plastics into solid carbonaceous material (Khan, M.R. 1996). However,
these technologies were only implemented on a laboratory scale.
In 2000, A.P.E. started a project to utilize the plastic rejects together with a sand mixture in the
production of construction materials. The pilot project was co-funded by FINNIDA through Mikkeli
Fair Trade Organization (KEMA) - a NGO from Finland. The original idea for making construction
materials from plastic rejects was developed by Matti Toivola and assisted by Ali-Pekka Toivola, who
patented the process and established a company called Oy Mine Re Plast Ltd. to license the
technology. These two engineers invented a method of producing bricks from a mixture of unsorted
thermoplastic wastes and minerals. However, this invention did not succeed commercially in Finland
because of lack of sand of the right quality. They came to A.P.E with the idea. A.P.E. engineers, who
had gained considerable experience with the manufacture of plastic crushing and agglomeration
machines, were able to modify one of these machines to handle plastic rejects by modifying the sifting
screen, produced an appropriate specific steel- furnace and developed the different sizes of moulds.
The process of recycling the plastic rejects starts by the preparation of one cubic meter of sifted sand
and adding it to one ton of mixed crushed plastic rejects. The second step is to mix the components
together and heat them in a specialized furnace. Thirdly, the mixture is pressed using a hydraulic press
to produce tiles, hexagon interlock, manhole covers and bricks. The whole process makes use of three
pieces of equipment: the agglomerating machine, the furnace and the hydraulic press. A.P.E trained
six young men and two women from the garbage collectors community to operate these machines.
A.P.E. is the only NGO manufacturer of the agglomerating and the specialized crusher machines in
Egypt.

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The reject of the rejected

Plastics + Sand

Heating in a Furnace
Up to 180 C

Pavement Tiles, Bricks,

Manholes and Other Products

Special Dies &

Hydraulic Press

8.0 PROJECTS OBJECTIVE

The recycling the rejects of the rejects initiative at A.P.E. is an alternative method to divert mixed
post-consumer plastics away from dumping or burning through the production of an environmentally
safe construction material. In addition, it supports the community that was traditionally involved with
the process of garbage collection associated activities and completely upgrades their standard of living
through the introduction of new technology, and training them on how to use it. This creates
respectable employment opportunities for them and improves their standard of living in the society.
The threat imposed on public health from the permeation of leachate from the plastic waste disposal
into the ground water especially drinking water supplies will also be decreased.
9.0 PROJECTS CREATIVITY & INNOVATION
Utilization of Non-Recyclable Mixed Plastic Waste in the Construction Industry.
A.P.E. is the only NGO that performs the recycling of the rejects operation in Egypt and the Middle
East. The produced bricks, interlocks, road ramps and manhole covers have revealed high potentials
for materials to be used in both the construction and infrastructure industries due to their apparent low
weight, stiffness and durability. The products have also provided a sound mean for arriving at a
sustainable development for the garbage problem in Egypt through the adoption of an environmental
recycling culture.

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Using the Participatory Planning Approach in Integrated Solid Waste Management.

One of the main lessons learned throughout A.P.E.s work with the garbage collectors over the years
in the three branches is that a participatory planning approach is a key to the success of integrated
solid waste management. Thus, the garbage collectors community is the best suited to push waste
recovery and recycling further downstream through the introduction of new technologies, creating
respectable employment opportunities and improving their status in the society.
10.0 PROGRESS UP TO DATE
A.P.E. was able to modify the Finnish technology to produce other products, including manhole
covers, pavement tiles, and road ramps. In addition, A.P.E. conducted a market survey in order to
guarantee the sustainability of this recycling industry in Egypt; and its possible replication in the rest
of the world. The National Research Center in Cairo found out that these products are better than clay
or cement bricks and do not absorb water at all. In Kattameya site, the number of beneficiaries of the
rejects line of production is 44 persons.
The project has been replicated now in El Gouna Resort in Hurgahda city in Southern Sinai, Egypt.
Orascom Holding for Tourist Development has purchased the equipments from A.P.E. and began to
use the products in paving El Gouna streets and using the manhole covers in covering the sewage. The
labor force working in the rejects unit in El Gouna is mainly from the garbage collectors coming from
different governorates and they are taking a fixed salary amounting to $100 in addition to
accommodation and transportation fees. The projects beneficiaries now as of 2007 are estimated to be
216 persons.
REFERENCES
Assad, Marie, Nadra Garas, Experiments in Community Development in a Zabbaleen Settlement,
Cairo, Volume 16, Monograph 4, American University in Cairo Press, (1993).
CIA, http://cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook (2005) .
El Haggar, S.M., and Sawiris, Y.LEnvironmentally Balanced Municipal Solid Waste Complex for
Zero Pollution. Enviro 2001, The Third International Conference for Environmental
Management and Technologies, Cairo, Egypt, pp. 29-31 (October -2001).
Environmentally Sound, Cost Effective Technology for Recycling of Mixed Plastic and Rubber
Waste. Materials Technology, 12 (1), pp.3-14. (January/February, 1997).
Ford, K.C., Re-conceptualizing sustainability: The role of outsiders and the importance of human
development. A MURP Professional paper in partial fulfillment of the Master of Urban
Planning Degree Requirements. The Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. The
University of Minnesota (2003).
Human Development Report: http://hdr.undp.org (2005).
Khan, M.R. (Ed.), Conversion and Utilization of Waste Materials. Washington: Taylor and Francis,
(1996).
Walker, Wendy. The Torah Zabbaleen, From Tin Shacks to high rises. The American University
in Cairo Press, (2005) (Under publishing)

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