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The informal sector in waste recycling in egypt2
1. THE INFORMAL SECTOR IN WASTE
RECYCLING IN EGYPT
Report Submitted to GTZ
MAY 2008
Submitted to GTZ by
2. Table of Contenets
ABBREVIATIONS ............................................................................................................................ 4
GLOSSARY OF EGYPTIAN TERMS .................................................................................................... 5
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................ 6
METHODOLOGY ............................................................................................................................ 6
Chapter 1: Historical Descriptive Narrative of Egypt’s SWM Situation ............................................ 8
1.1 Actors in the Informal Recycling Economy ........................................................................... 8
1.1.1 The Traditional Waste Collectors (Zabbaleen) ........................................................... 8
1.1.2 Roamers (Sarriiha).................................................................................................. 10
1.1.3 Robabekia and Saxonia Peddlers ............................................................................ 10
1.1.4 Middlemen and Intermediary Buyers/Dealers ......................................................... 10
1.1.5 Wholesale Merchants of Recoverable from Roamers ............................................... 10
1.2 Formal Actors in the Solid Waste System .................................................................... 11
1.2.1 Local Level Government ...................................................................................... 11
1.2.2 Ministries.............................................................................................................. 11
1.2.3 The Formal Private Sector....................................................................................... 13
1.2.4 Donors and Private Supporters ............................................................................... 14
1.2.5 Residents and Commercial Waste Generators ........................................................ 15
1.3 Adaptive Strategies of the Informal Recycling Sector ..................................................... 15
Chapter 2: Overview of the Institutional Framework of Informal Waste Workers .......................... 17
2.1 Informality of Shelter is linked to Informality of Livelihood ................................................ 18
2.2 ..... Business Aspects of Informality: International Contracting Threatens a Dynamic Recycling
Sector ..................................................................................................................................... 20
2.2.1 Response to Markets.............................................................................................. 20
2.2.3 Ownership of Land, Sorting Space and other Assets ............................................... 20
2.2.4 Capital ................................................................................................................... 21
2.2.5 Labor and Wages ................................................................................................... 21
2.2.6 Growth in Recycling Enterprises ............................................................................. 21
2.2.7 Trading Networks .................................................................................................. 21
2.2.8 Specialized Trading Towns and Centers ................................................................. 22
2.3 Informal Sector Recyclers: Private Business Partners to Large Industry ........................... 22
2.3.1 Livelihoods, Income and Employment..................................................................... 23
2.3.2 Exploitation of Household Waste Collectors by Middlemen ..................................... 24
The Informal Sector in Waste Recycling in Egypt
1
3. 2.3.3 Competition for the Waste by Scavengers ............................................................... 24
2.3.4 Residents’ Displeasure ........................................................................................... 24
2.3.5 Resettlement Issues ............................................................................................... 24
2.4 Challenges Faced by Informal Sector Recyclers .............................................................. 25
2.4.1 Poor Ability to Organize ..................................................................................... 25
2.4.2 Lack of Transparency of the System ...................................................................... 25
2.4.3 Financial Constraints ............................................................................................ 26
2.4.4 Legal and Contractual Obstacles .......................................................................... 26
2.4.5 Social Issues Related to Stigma of Trade and Perception of Society at Large ................ 26
2.4.6 Need for Skills Upgrading – Training ..................................................................... 26
2.4.7 Operational Issues ................................................................................................ 26
2.4.8 Informality ............................................................................................................ 27
2.4.9 Difficulty in Acquiring and Asserting Ownership of Property ................................... 27
2.4.10 Inadequate Market Information and Market Intelligence ......................................... 27
2.5 Non-Profit Community Groups ..................................................................................... 27
2.5.1. Association of Garbage Collectors for Community Development (AGCCD) .................. 27
2.5.2. Association for the Protection of the Environment (APE)............................................. 28
2.5.3 Spirit of Youth for Environmental Services (SoY).......................................................... 28
2.6 Lessons Learned from the Various Institutional Actors ...................................................... 28
2.6.1 Lesson One: Recycling of Source Segregated Waste Dignifies the Trade and
Generates Income ............................................................................................................... 28
2.6.2 Lesson Two: Source Segregation of Household Waste into Two Fractions (Organic
and Non Organic) is Feasible ............................................................................................... 29
2.6.3 Lesson Three: The Regularity of Service and Efficiency in Recovery are Based on
Inherent Incentives to Collectors Who are Recyclers: ............................................................ 32
2.6.4 Lesson Four: Motivated by Profit and armed with Market Information the Informal
Sector Recovers High Levels of Industrial Waste all over Egypt ............................................. 33
2.6.5 Lesson Five: It is Possible to Institutionalize Informal Sector Models of Clean Recovery
and Recycling of Institutional Waste .................................................................................... 34
2.6.6 Lesson Six: Informal Sector and Formal Private Sector Interests Converge around
Brand Name Fraud, 2000 .................................................................................................... 35
Chapter 3: Integration of Informal Waste Workers in Formal Systems: Legal, Institutional and
Technical Aspects ....................................................................................................................... 36
3.1 Solid Waste Management Legal Framework ....................................................................... 36
3.1.1 Other Laws Address Specific Aspects of Waste: ................................................... 36
3.1.2 Solid Waste Management Specifications Related to Recycling in law 38/67 and its
Executive Regulations: ........................................................................................................ 38
The Informal Sector in Waste Recycling in Egypt
2
4. 3.1.3 Other Laws and Regulations: .................................................................................. 39
3.1.4 Challenges Related to Law Enforcement ................................................................. 39
3.1.5 Laws Related to the Formalization & Licensing of Businesses .............................. 39
Chapter 4: Assessment of Integration Process of Informal Waste Workers ................................... 44
4.1 Awareness and Information Dissemination ........................................................................ 45
4.2 Actions towards Formalization of Businesses .................................................................. 45
4.2.1 Registration through Local Authority .......................................................................... 45
4.2.2 Recourse to Registering with the SFD ......................................................................... 46
4.2.3 Fear of Taxation ......................................................................................................... 47
4.2.4 Complexities of Formalization of Land Tenure............................................................ 47
4.2.5 Cooperating with the Industrial Modernization Center (IMC) ....................................... 48
Chapter 5: Lessons Learned, Conclusions and Recommendations................................................ 51
The Informal Sector in Waste Recycling in Egypt
3
5. ABBREVIATIONS
AmCham American Chamber of Commerce
AGCCD Association of Garbage Collectors for Community Development
ASMAE Les Amis de Soeur Emmanuelle
AOYE Arab Office for Youth & Environment
APE Association for the Protection of the Environment
BMZ German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development
CCBA Cairo Cleansing and Beautification Authority
CAPMAS Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics
CCFD Comite Catholique Contre la Faim et Pour le Development
CDA Community Development Associations
CID CID Consulting
CRS Catholic Relief Services
Danida Danish International Development Assistance
EEAA Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency
EIA Environmental Impact Assessments
EMU Environmental Management Units
EPAP Egyptian Pollution Abatement Program
EQI Environmental Quality International
FCC Federal Communications Commission
FEI Federation of Egyptian Industries
Finnida Finnish International Development Agency
GCBA Giza Cleaning and Beautification Agency
GOPP General Organization for Physical Planning
GTZ German Technical Cooperation
IMC Industrial Modernization Center
MRF Materials Recovery Facility
MSW Municipal Solid Waste
NGO Non Governmental Organization
PET Polyethylene Terephthalate
PVC Polyvinyl Chloride
RBO Regional Branch Office
SEAM Support for Environmental Assessment and Management
SFD Social Fund for Development
SME Small & Medium Enterprise
SWM Solid Waste Management
UNDP United Nations Development Program
USAID United States Agency for International Development
The Informal Sector in Waste Recycling in Egypt
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6. GLOSSARY OF EGYPTIAN TERMS
CAIRENES: inhabitants of Cairo
FUUL MEDAMMES: popular Egyptian local dish made of fava beans
LAE’ITA: scavenge and collect the waste by picking through dumps, landfills, and street bins
MO’ALLEM (pl. MO’ALLEMEEN): Middlemen and intermediary buyers/dealers who own small-scale
depots. They live inside and outside of the garbage collectors neighborhoods. Some used to be
garbage collectors themselves, others were never in that trade; both were able to accumulate
capital to acquire space to store large quantities of recoverables. They sell to wholesalers and
large buyers of non organic waste.
ROBABEKIA and SAXONIA Peddlers: an age-old group of people trading in old, used, and unwanted
household items, and exist throughout Greater Cairo and most other Governorates in Egypt.,
TOGGAR (singular “tager”): Wholesale Merchants of Recoverables from Roamers:.
SARRIIH (pl. SARRIIHA): Egyptian term for roamer or scavenger: Sarrih clandestine search waste
bins for recoverable. Unlike the Zabaleen scavengers don’t have agreements with the owners or
the Waahis. Other terms exist such as “Sarriih Khorda,” which means roamer specializing in scrap
metal (literally, Sarriih means roamer; and Khorda means scrap). who roam the streets buying,
trading, and exchanging recyclable waste items
WAAHIS: Oasis migrants to the city. They first organized a collection service of paper from
households in the early forties. They sold the paper to public baths who needed to heat water over
long periods of time and to preparers of the local national dish fuul medammes.
ZABBALEEN: Traditional Egyptian waste collector. Zabbaleen collect household waste in agreement
with the owners and charge their service. In most of the cases they have a fixed routes and fixed
customers. The Zabbaleen formed an agreement with the Waahis (from the oases of Egypt) to take
over the collection and transport of household waste to their own homes. This latter group was
denied their share of the monthly fee collected by the Waahis, and sometimes had to pay him a fee
for access to the waste. As the Zabbaleen became more involved in waste collection, they started
to receive a small fee from the Waahis.
The Informal Sector in Waste Recycling in Egypt
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7. THE INFORMAL SECTOR IN WASTE RECYCLING IN EGYPT
CID CONSULTING
MAY 2008
INTRODUCTION
The German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) executes The Recycling Partnerships project on behalf of
the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). It takes a close
look at global experiences around the integration of the informal sector in solid waste
management. CID Consulting was commissioned to undertake a study specific to Egypt, within
the sector project “Promotion of concepts for pro-poor and environmentally friendly closed-loop
approaches in solid waste management (SWM)” work title: Recycling Partnerships; PN 03.2144. It
is hoped that this study, along with others conducted in other developing countries will enrich and
inform the current debate around the informal sector in solid waste management. The study sums
up key factors, planned and unplanned events, circumstances that lead to an increased
involvement of the informal sector in SWM in Egypt. It ends with an outlook on approaches and
mechanisms which might be taken to advance the process further.
METHODOLOGY
The study used a combined methodology of desk research of reports, papers, conference
proceedings, numerous focus groups and in depth interviews with key representatives of the
sector, their organizations, government representatives, donors, consulting firms and individual
recyclers. It is structured in the following manner:
Chapter 1: Historical Descriptive Research: presents a brief chronicle description of the
development of the Informal Sector in SWM in Egypt. The research reviewed existing literature,
interviewed garbage collectors who came to Cairo in the late forties, and reviewed reports on the
sector from the early seventies and eighties.
Chapter 2: Overview of the Institutional Framework of Informal Waste Workers: This chapter
presents the continuum of informality which exists in Egypt and tracks its evolution. It outlines the
role of intermediaries, umbrella organizations, issues of licensing, associations, cooperatives, and
their viability. The chapter identifies the organizations which have been formed to mobilize the
informal sector, and describes the manner in which their local initiatives attempted to integrate
that sector. Meetings with members of these organizations led to a description of how these
activities were designed and undertaken. An analysis subsequently attempts to outline what
factors and structure influenced the formation of coalitions or impeded them. This process is
reviewed within the socio-politico cultural context of Cairo and Egypt. Aspects which may have
influenced the process in an indirect manner are extrapolated. The historical and institutional
growth of Cairo as a city, the changing face of the economy, and the legal and political changes
over the past fifty years are the backdrop to the discussion in this chapter.
Chapter 3: Integration of Informal Waste Workers in Formal Systems: Legal, Institutional and
Technical Aspects: This chapter covers the legal framework within which the process of
formalization or exclusion occurs. Laws, decrees and ordinances are listed and a discussion of
The Informal Sector in Waste Recycling in Egypt
6
8. how they impact the informal sector is provided. The chapter also outlines key factors and key
actors contributing to the integration of the informal sector in SWM systems, such as: Government
efforts, donor efforts, the informal sector’s efforts, and Non Govermental Organizations’ (NGOs)
efforts. Research methods used included focus groups, a review of existing reports, and meetings
with representatives of garbage collectors and municipal heads, consultants in the waste
management field, practitioners, NGO’s and waste dealers to arrive at elements of successful
integration models where they exist.
Chapter 4: Assessment of the Integration Process of Informal Waste Workers: This chapter
analyzes and assesses the sustainability of current practice to date with regards to the integration
of the informal sector. Focus groups with practitioners and researchers were undertaken to assist
in the: identification of necessary strategies to promote and ensure the sustainability of the
integration process; identification of further external support that might be necessary;
determination of whether and how the integration process is positioned in the poverty reduction
strategy of Egypt
Chapter 5 : Lessons Learned, Conclusions and Recommendations: An analysis of the points
outlined above yielded recommendations on how to proceed to bridge the gap between official
policy and the current status of the informal sector. The study terminates with recommendations
and lessons learned for potential transfer to other contexts, for further adaptation and tailoring to
these specific realities.
The Informal Sector in Waste Recycling in Egypt
7
9. Chapter 1: Historical Descriptive Narrative of Egypt’s SWM Situation
The current actors in Egypt’s Solid Waste Management System are many. The very first organized
service ever provided in the largest city in Egypt, Cairo the capital, was one which was designed,
managed and implemented by the informal sector. The oasis migrants to the city, the waahis, first
organized a collection service of paper from households in the early forties. They sold the paper
to public baths which needed to heat water over long periods of time and to preparers of the local
national breakfast food fuul medammes (fava beans). At that time the population of Cairo was
around 2 million. Other cities in Egypt disposed of their organic waste by raising small animals on
that fraction. Non organic waste had still not begun to appear as Egypt was largely an agricultural
country and communities enjoyed rural characteristics. Municipalities were not charged with the
provision of cleansing services to towns and cities. No laws, ordinances or regulations existed to
regulate the sector or the service. Environmental agencies, ministry or strategy were non existent.
1.1 Actors in the Informal Recycling Economy
1.1.1 The Traditional Waste Collectors (Zabbaleen)
Garbage collectors first appeared in Egypt in the city of Cairo in the late forties. They provided
residents with a door to door, daily collection service and survived on the recycling of organic
waste which they fed to pigs and goats. They lived on the edge of the city in what became known
as garbage villages, referencing the squalor and living conditions where household waste was
brought back to their homes for the sorting and animal raising activities. These informal
settlements grew in number and density as they became home to the ‘zabbaleen’ (Arabic for
garbage collectors) who had migrated from the rural south of Egypt, specifically from the province
of Assiut, 400 kilometers south of the capital, to the outskirts of Cairo. They formed an
agreement with the waahis (from the oases of Egypt) to take over the collection and transport of
household waste to their own homes. This latter group was denied their share of the monthly fee
collected by the Waahis, and sometimes had to pay him a fee for access to the waste. As the
zabbaleen became more involved in waste collection, they started to receive a small fee from the
waahis. For residents of Cairo receiving the service however, the difference between the waahis
and zabbaleen is not readily apparent. The latter were subjected to numerous forced evictions (5-
6 in the span of 30 years) but each time were told by authorities where to resettle in recognition of
the need to keep them operating the city’s waste system and in the absence of any other
alternative to municipal waste management in Cairo.
The understanding was that the garbage collectors (zabbaleen) would continue to deliver the
paper to the waahis, while keeping the food to raise animals and to trade metals and plastics
which had begun appearing in household waste in the fifties.
The introduction of fuel oil and the introduction of private baths in dwellings in the 1940’s
gradually disrupted this chain and led to the gradual disappearanc of public baths. Thus the
waahis no longer found ready customers among the fuul medammes producers nor in the
operators of public baths.
As Cairo grew, so did the coverage of the waste collectors of high income neighborhoods. Rural
to urban migration patterns brought in more farmers with whom they had kinship ties. The
cousins they had hired soon became licensed with their own collection route and their own
The Informal Sector in Waste Recycling in Egypt
8
11. 1.1.2 Roamers (Sarriiha)
They represent a trade that covers all of Egypt. Their name derives from the nature of their
activity: Sarriiha (singular sarriih), are those who roam the streets buying, trading, and exchanging
recyclable waste items, and “lae’ita,” are those who scavenge and collect the waste by picking
through dumps, landfills, and street bins. Other terms exist such as “sarriih khorda,” which means
roamer specializing in scrap metal (literally, sarriih means roamer; and khorda means scrap). They
roam around the country in both rural and urban areas either with pushcarts or on donkey-pulled
carts. They have no fixed neighborhood where they all agglomerate the way the garbage collectors
of Cairo do. They have no community-based organization to represent them. They barter with
residents in low income neighborhoods in Cairo and in towns and villages in the Delta and Upper
Egypt. They exchange mainly plastics and metal which housewives have set aside for them in
return for household items of utility. These range from clothes pegs to glasses, pitchers, plastic
tubs, and the like. They purchase recovered items from commercial waste generators as well.
They also purchase source segregated waste from commercial and institutional waste generators
such as supermarkets, butchers, metal workshops and the like. The roamers possess limited
capital especially if they work for themselves. They may be attached to a trader who owns a depot
(a mo’allem) who supplies their donkey cart and the day’s cash for cash transactions. The
mo’allem’s advantage is that he possesses capital and storage space and thus is able to buy
whatever these roamers recover from their day’s bartering activities with residents. He also has
better market information than the roamers.
1.1.3 Robabekia and Saxonia Peddlers
They are an age-old group of people trading old, used, and unwanted household items, and exist
throughout Greater Cairo and most other Governorates in Egypt. They have acquired a vast know-
how in trading, bartering, buying and selling. They have also accumulated knowledge of fixing and
repairing old appliances, furniture, house wares, and simple machines by way of knowing where to
fix each of the items, where they could be potentially sold. Robabekia includes all items that fall
under old and used appliances, house wares, apparel, paper, books, glass bottles, and scrap
metal. Those who roam the streets of the neighborhoods calling out “saxonia,” are in search of old
clothes and unwanted apparel, which they trade along with dishes, plates, bowls, and tubs.
“Saxonia” refers to hard porcelain produced in Saxony.
1.1.4 Middlemen and Intermediary Buyers/Dealers
These live inside and outside garbage collectors neighborhoods. Some used to be garbage
collectors themselves. Others were never in that trade; both were able to accumulate capital to
acquire space to store large quantities of recoverables. They are known as “mo’allemeen”
(singular “mo’allem”) who own small-scale depots. They sell to wholesalers and large buyers of
non organic waste.
1.1.5 Wholesale Merchants of Recoverable from Roamers
These buy in bulk from small merchants who roam the streets of Cairo and from the middlemen
who live in low income and garbage neighborhoods and who buy from waste generators, roamers
and garbage collectors. They are large-scale dealers, known as “toggaar” (singular “taager”) who
own large warehouses specializing in a single type of recyclable.
The Informal Sector in Waste Recycling in Egypt
10
12. 1.2 Formal Actors in the Solid Waste System
1.2.1
.
In the early 70’s the traditional collectors of Alexandria mobilized and demanded infrastrucutre for
their neighborhood from the then governor of Alexandria. They threatened to strike if they were
not granted basic human conditions (water, sanitation, lighting, etc.). The response of the
Alexandria governorate was to evict them otuside of the city and disperse them. A few continued
clandestinely but were not enough to maintain the level and coverage of service to the city. The
governorate responded by contracting small private hauling companies and NGO’s, and
supplemented their efforts with municipal services on a campaign basis. Years of this system still
did not lead to a cleaner city. The situation was exacerbated during the peak summer months
when more than 2 million Cairenes (residents of Cairo) descended upon Alexandria in escape of
the heat of Cairo.
In 2000 the governorate of Alexandria decided it had exhausted all local solutions to the problem
of the city’s cleanliness and resorted to international tendering of the service, but this time to
include the novel component of sanitary landfills since uncontrolled dumpsites had become a
menace to most major cities in Egypt. There was no attempt to draw elements of high recycling
rates and labor intensive technology leading to high employment in recycling as practiced by the
informal sector or to include that sector in the new plan. Decision makers felt a great weight
would be lifted off their shoulders if they were left with the task of only monitoring these
international contracts. Recognizing that they did not have the competence to monitor
international contracts, the governorate of Alexandria (in 2000) and later the governorate of Cairo
(in 2002) sought the assistance of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
to establish and train a Contract Monitoring Unit to oversee the implementation of the workplan as
agreed upon between the governorate and the international winner: in the case of Alexandria,
Onyx (Veolia) and in the case of Cairo, two Spanish firms and one Italian firm.
Governorates come under the structure of The Ministry of Local Development. It is the governing
body charged with the administration of governorates to include local city councils and
Environmental Management Units (EMUs) established in the nineties when the Ministry of State for
the Environment and its executive arm, the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (EEAA) were
established. The EMU’s are located in the governorate central offices. Governorates are vested
with the authority to negotiate and contract waste management services to ‘private’ operators.
They have the ability to raise local revenues to supplement the local waste cleansing ‘fee for
service’ in order to meet contractual obligations towards the private contractors. Local
municipalities and city councils are charged with town cleanliness and the licensing of small, local
operators.
1.2.2 Ministries
The Ministry of State for the Environment has a mandate to monitor and protect Egypt’s
environment. It is governed by Law 4/1994. The EEAA, is the executive branch of that ministry.
It coordinates waste issues with line ministries in Egypt, monitors the implementation of
environmental guidelines, reports environmental violations to the relevant ministry, imposes and
collects fines from institutional violators, coordinates activities of its Regional Branch Offices
The Informal Sector in Waste Recycling in Egypt
11
13. (RBOs) and governorate EMUs. It produced a national waste management strategy in 1998 and is
responsible for monitoring its implementation and dissemination to the public at large as well as
to institutions. The National Waste Management Strategy specifies operational targets for waste, to
be met for all of Egypt:
• Collection coverage must exceed 60% for towns by 2005 and 70% by 2010.
• Collection coverage must exceed 80% for capitals of governorates by 2005 and 90% by 2010.
• A minimum of 80% of disposal to occur in landfills as opposed to dumpsites by 2005 and 90%
by 2010.
• 50% of organic waste generated to be composted by 2005.
• 20% of solid waste generated to be recycled by 2005.
• 40% of municipal solid waste by 2005 to be source segregated into wet and dry by 2005
• 5% source reduction to be achieved by 2005
• 100% cost recovery of waste management services to be reached by 2005
• The level of funding for waste management services to reach 0.35% of GDP by 2005.
Up till 2008 this was not met.
The adminsitrative structure of formal actors in the waste management system is shown below.
Ministry of State Ministry of Local Ministry of
for Environment Development Social Affairs
(EEAA)
RBOs NGOs
Governorates
Waste Treatment Private
and Recycling Contractors
Centres
Local City Councils
Environmental Management
Units – EMU’s
The Formal Institutional Framework for Solid Waste Management
in Egypt
In order to achieve its mandate, the EEAA is required to build the technical and managerial
capabilities of environmental officers in the EMU’s and RBO’s, provide some financial support to
public, private, and non profit groups to comply with laws and regulations. In order to do that, it
uses a mechanism of an Environmental Protection Fund and designs special programs for specific
lengths of time (e.g. the Industrial Waste Reduction Project). It sites the locations for sanitary
landfills and partners with donors to achieve the national waste strategy.
The EEAA does the following:
• Sites landfills for governorates, towns and cities.
The Informal Sector in Waste Recycling in Egypt
12
14. • Develops the design elements, specifications and principles of the Environmental Impact
Assessments (EIA) for waste treatment and disposal facilities in concert with the relevant local
authority
• Reviews EIAs submitted by the relevant administrative agency or licensing agency, and issues
an official judgement within a 60 day period.
• Monitors the Environmental Register facility to ensure data consistency with the actual
environmental status; undertakes sampling and conducts appropriate checks to verify
complaince with environmental standards.
The Ministry of Health oversees the vast network of healthcare institutions generating clinical and
health care waste, such as public hospitals, teaching hospitals, private hospitals, private and
public clinics, public and private labs, pharmaceutical firms, etc. It has a clear mandate to enforce
the safe management of hazardous clinical wastes generated by these facilities. In the current
context of lax enforcement of relevant rules and regulations and/or charging violators, the
informal sector has become an unfortunate actor in the recovery and recycling of hospital waste.
Syringes, intravenous tubes, empty bottles of expensive medication find their way to informal
recycling markets: informal recoverers process the plastic and sell it to industrial manufacturers.
This activity exposes the waste recyclers in the informal economy to untold hazards, primarily
hepatitis C caused by the exposure to infected needles while attempting to recover the plastic
portion of the syringe.
The Ministry of Agriculture is responsible for directing farmers towards safe, appropriate methods
of managing agricultural residues. In Cairo, the introduction of new rice harvesting technologies
in the late 90’s led to agricultural residues being burned in large quantities and mixing with the
existing large quantities of smoke emanating from burning household waste in uncontrolled
dumpsites in Cairo. The persistence of that ‘black cloud’ hanging over Cairo for three to four
years during the months of October and November, drove waste management policy makers
towards the resolution of the problem by tendering the entire system to international bidders and
inviting multinationals to take on the whole system, not just the final disposal end of it.
The Ministry of Irrigation and Water Resources is the primary agency to which falls the
responsibility of the welfare of the Nile - the lifeline of Egypt. As small rural towns grow and
municipal services do not meet the needs of burgeoning populations, municipal waste is dumped
into the river, in irrigation canals and other waterways. Tourism also contributes to the pollution
of the Nile as cruise ships practice uncontrolled, illegal dumping of effluent and municipal waste
into the Nile.
1.2.3 The Formal Private Sector
1.2.3.1 The For Profit Private Sector
Private contractors in the waste sector are of two types: local, Egyptian companies and foreign
multinationals. The latter bid for, and won international contracts to manage the waste of the
entire city of Alexandria and three out of the four zones of Cairo. Cairo was divided into four
zones, as each corresponded to the size, population and waste generation rate of Alexandria
which had led the experiment in international contracting three years before Cairo. One zone was
won by an Italian Public Private Partnership Firm: AMA, a second was won by the Spanish Urbaser
which later became known by the name Enser; the third was won by the Spanish FCC. The latter
The Informal Sector in Waste Recycling in Egypt
13
15. also won a portion of the Giza contract while the Italian Jacorossi won another portion of Giza.
When no one qualified or bid for the fourth zone in Cairo (the southern zone) the CCBA formed a
public private firm called El Fostat to do that. El Fostat, in turn sub-contracted part of its southern
zone to an Egyptian private firm entitled Europa 2000.
1.2.3.2 The Not for Profit Private Sector
Community Development Associations (CDAs) all over Egypt have implemented community based
waste management schemes. These have not had a visible impact on the national level yet provide
models which can be mobilized for interventions around recycling, source segregation into wet
and dry, and for the establishment of small processing and trading centers for recycling. They
represent the mosaic of community groups in Egypt today. NGOs and CBOs have played
numerous roles in the waste management system of Egypt. These are summarized here below:
1. Providing assistance and welfare relief to the informal sector
2. Implementing development initiatives in waste management at the grass roots
3. Testing pilot schemes designed to upgrade the working methods of the informal waste sector
4. Demonstrating replicable small scale waste systems based on informal sector aspects of
recovery and recycling
5. Undertaking action research at the grass roots around waste issues
6. Participating in research projects around the integration of the informal sector
7. Advocating for the rights of the informal sector
8. Communicating with government agencies, the media and other NGO’s to place the informal
sector on the policy agenda for waste management in the city and in the country
9. Conducting public awareness campaigns around innovative methods of waste segregation at
source
10. Approaching donors to fund development projects
11. Raising in kind contributions from individuals and the private sector as well as community
groups to improve living and working conditions of the informal sector.
1.2.3.3 The Popular Economy Private Sector
The licensed Semi Formal, the Informal and Traditional sector (waste collectors, recyclers,
manufacturers, scavengers, sorters, recoverers, and traders) constitute a sizeable portion of the
waste recycling system in Egypt. Success of the informal sector in achieving high recycling rates
and establishing trading channels shows promise in the creation of market-based incentives to
integrate this sector in the overall waste management structure. Their principal contribution has
been their long standing and persistent handling of these materials as resources and not as
‘waste’, their contribution to employment and livelihood generation around these materials and
their achieving strikingly high rates of recovery and recycling, at no cost to local authorities,
central governments or residents.
1.2.4 Donors and Private Supporters
Among the principal partners supporting the traditional collectors of household waste were
donors such as the International Development Association of the World Bank, the Ford Foundation,
the Association of Garbage Collectors for Community Development (AGCCD), Les Amis de Soeur
Emmanuelle (ASMAE), the Danish International Development Assistance (Danida), the Finnish
International Development Agency (Finnida), Unesco; International NGO’s such as Oxfam, the
Comite Catholique Contre la Faim et Pour le Developpement (CCFD), Association for the Protection
The Informal Sector in Waste Recycling in Egypt
14
16. of the Environment (APE), Oxfam, and Catholic Relief Services (CRS), and consulting firms such as
Environmental Quality International (EQI) and CID Consulting.
1.2.5 Residents and Commercial Waste Generators
The failure of the current system, coupled with a steady increase in population and urbanization,
have brought about the collapse of Cairo’s waste services and caused a public outcry for a more
efficient system which accommodates the city’s residents and their lifestyle. Small kitchens, no
access to waste shafts in new buildings, the preponderance of stray dogs and cats, and the even
bigger preponderance of a scavenging urban population living below the poverty level (% of
population below national poverty line 2000-2006): 17% and proportion of the population below
the poverty line (2004/ 2005): 19.6%1 led residents to call for a new look at the current poorly
designed system.
The system faced more challenges at the official level:
• The lack of reliable and timely information on waste quantities, composition and
characterization
• Limited physical, human, and financial resources in the entire waste system.
• Limited capacity of municipal and local city council officials in undertaking cleansing
services
• Limited capacity of municipal and local city council officials in enforcing laws, and
monitoring of private operators
• Local governments unable to cover cleaning system costs from the current fees for service
and having to resort to piecemeal mechanisms and financial resources to provide adequate
services.
• The general absence of properly sited, designed, and constructed sanitary landfills
• Unclear modalities of integration of informal sector waste workers: e.g. cooperation
between international operators and local NGOs, traditional waste collection groups, and
private operators.
• Low level of public awareness, poor public behavior and practices with regards to waste
handling and disposal
1.3 Adaptive Strategies of the Informal Recycling Sector
Throughout the last half century the informal waste collectors/recyclers have unrelentingly come
up with adaptive strategies to continue to access the waste and circumvent barriers to that access
while at the same time integrate into new systems as they came up. Theirs has been the most
regular and adaptable service because it springs from a survival strategy to make a living from the
waste since the fee for service traditionally went to the waahis. Thus materials are treated as a
resource and a livelihood base. Examples of these strategies were:
1. Renting a truck from outside the neighborhood for a few hours when donkey pulled carts were
banned. This involved using bigger cloth containers to collect the resource from several buildings,
store at the corners of streets, then load onto trucks. This meant that they did not need to rent
the truck and driver for the full six (6) hours that the collection task lasted. Instead the truck
could quickly roll through their assigned route and quickly pick up these huge containers which
had been 'planted' at corners of streets in a span of two hours.
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/MENAEXT/EGYPTEXTN/0,,menuPK:287166~pagePK:141132~piP
1
K:141107~theSitePK:256307,00.html
The Informal Sector in Waste Recycling in Egypt
15
17. 2. Acquiring the capital to purchase trucks, and recycling machines, to build solid homes and to
educate their children. They did this by selling any gold belonging to their wives or daughters; by
pooling cash savings among brothers; by selling any remaining small plot of land or house in their
ancestral village, or by obtaining credit from loan sharks in the neighborhood.
3. Teaching their sons to drive and giving them an education. In later years, this was to prove to
have been a critical decision in increasing their social mobility and their acceptance by Cairenes at
large.
4. Sustaining their daily collection from households on a door to door basis thus maintaining high
service levels to one third of the city’s high income neighborhoods and commercial waste
generators (grocery stores, print shops, small garment Small Medium Enterprise’s (SMEs), metal
workshops, etc.).
5. Maintaining their autonomy in organizing the expansion of the service in concert with the
expansion of the city. They obtained licenses from the CCBA whenever new neighborhoods
appeared in the city. More collectors and recyclers were hired. Cousins and other day laborers
expanded the workforce.
6. Establishing a hub of recycling activity in their neighborhoods as their homes were sorting
stations and their neighbors provided the entire value chain – from trading small amounts of
specific waste: paper, cardboard, glass, plastic, cloth, metals, bones, etc. – to processing each
kind of recovered material: secondary sorting, baling, cutting large items with manual scissors,
granulating, washing, drying, pelletizing, agglomerating, manufacturing The food was fed to pigs
which they raised in the back of their homes.
7. Providing employment and income for thousands of unskilled, unemployed youths: today an
estimated 300,000 people in Cairo are engaged - either directly or indirectly - in the collection,
transport, recovery and recycling aspects of managing the solid waste of one third of the city's
household waste/resource. Women are predominantly responsible for the manual sorting of the
recoverable components. Only 15-20% is not recovered. This is transported to Cairo's main
municipal dump where, until 2003, it was left without any sanitary treatment.
8. Establishing one of the world’s largest small enterprise recycling industries through private
ownership of recycling machines, processing machines, maintenance equipment, trading
enterprises, and trading with the entire country all the way through to exporting plastic PET to
China. In 2006, at least 1000 SME workshops existed in the largest recyclers’ neighborhood -
Mokattam.
9. Refining their manual sorting expertise so that recovered items are sorted by highly
differentiated characteristics and take a variety of trading routes. They are sold at different prices,
depending on their level of cleanliness, wholeness and type, size, color, soiled or clean condition,
etc. They do not sell the waste/resource unsorted directly to anyone, as it is their sorting activity
which adds value to mixed waste. This resource is perceived as a nuisance by society. Waste
collectors do not sort communally; therefore it is possible to estimate, with a fair measure of
accuracy, how much is recovered of each item.
The Informal Sector in Waste Recycling in Egypt
16
18. While the collection route is the domain mainly of men and children, the task of manually sorting
the garbage into separate piles of recyclables falls to the women and adolescent girls who do not
accompany their fathers on the garbage route. Upper Egyptian cultural norms dictate that they
stay in their neighborhoods in order not to jeopardize family honor.
Today, six recycling neighborhoods form a ring around the city of Cairo2.These are:
1. Mokattam, with an estimated population of 60,000 - collects from downtown, Shoubra,
Abbasiyya, Ramsis Square, Abdeen, Rod el Farag and parts of Nasr City and Zamalek;
2. Ezbet el Nakhl, with an estimated population of about 25,000 - administratively in the
governorate of Qalyoubiyya - collects from Heliopolis, Zeitoun, Saray el Qubba;
3. Moetamadeyya - collects from Mohandessiin and Giza;
4. El Baragiil - collects from Zamalek, Dokki, Agouza, Embaba and Mohandessiin;
5. Tora - collects from Maadi, Basateen, Dar el salaam and others.
6. Helwan, the southernmost neighborhood of Cairo.
They sort and recycle around 80 – 85% of the resources/waste they collect, making a living from
recovering, recycling and trading recyclable materials. They provide the more affluent
neighbourhoods of Cairo with door-to-door service at a minimal fee paid by residents and at no
cost to the Government.
The recycling industries in their settlements have developed extensive backward and forward
linkages with other informal and formal markets throughout the country. In addition to collecting
mixed household waste, they also purchase source segregated waste from commercial and
institutional waste generators, as well as roamers, middlemen, etc. These are sold as either end
products or inputs for other manufacturing activities to large scale industry of informal sector
small enterprise
Ez b e t El N a k he l
El M o a 'ta m a d ia
T ura a l-B a la d
Traditional Waste Collectors Neighbourhoods in Cairo, Egypt
Chapter 2: Overview of the Institutional Framework of Informal Waste Workers
Studies undertaken by the “Support for Environmental Assessment and Management3 (SEAM)
Program” in governorates outside of Cairo confirm the existence of a sizeable recycling informal
sector with strong economic activity covering the entire country. It has largely gone
undocumented and un-quantified. Its characteristics are:
2 CID Consulting, “Study on Brand Name Fraud”. Commissioned by Chemonics/Ahmed Gaber & Associates, June 1998
SEAM, “Support for Environmental Assessment and Management (SEAM) , environmental program implemented by the
3
Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency.(EEAA), Entec UK Ltd and ERM with support from the UK Department for
International Development (1996).
The Informal Sector in Waste Recycling in Egypt
17
19. • Thriving activity which recovers, trades in, processes and re-manufactures plastic, scrap metal,
paper, cardboard and bones.
• A culturally intrinsic practice of separation at the source, among households, institutional and
commercial waste generators, which makes the sought-for items available when the roamers
access towns, villages and neighborhoods.
• Highly developed markets and strategies in the informal source segregated waste sector, and a
chain management of the resource from generators all the way to recyclers.
• Substantial employment opportunities in that informal sector of source segregated waste.
• Specialized towns and centers for the recovery and trade of specific items appearing in the
municipal, industrial and commercial waste streams. These are source segregated and traded
through a chain of roamers, traders, middlemen, graduated traditional collectors and informal
sector operators in all of Egypt’s towns and villages.
• Small and medium enterprises appearing everywhere in small towns and larger villages around
the processing, re-manufacturing and trading of particularly recovered recyclables.
• Manufacturing of recycled end products which may sometimes not qualify to consumer
protection standards. Informal arrangements embedded within the formal sector of collection,
transport and disposal of municipal waste.
• A very slow, gradual departure from re-use, recovery and recycling as urban lifestyles replace
rural ones, but a persistence of that behavior well into certain suburbs of the capital.
Where people leave off habits of re-use and recovery, scavengers -the poorest of the poor- step in
to perform that function and create a network which demonstrates highly developed survival
strategies devised and adopted by the poor.
2.1 Informality of Shelter is linked to Informality of Livelihood
In 1993, a General Organization for Physical Planning (GOPP), the government agency charged with
urban planning in Egypt, estimated that there were 23 informal settlements in the Greater Cairo
area with a total population of 5.88 million people and an average density of around 685 persons
per hectare.4 Current estimates of the number of informal areas in Egypt vary. There is still no
agreement on definitions and boundaries. From the public administration’s point of view Egypt’s
informal urban areas are often considered a problem. Yet, from a macro-economic point of view
they have been the solution to housing for poor and low-income families for the past forty years.
The fast growth of informal settlements particularly on the periphery of Cairo in line with fast
urbanization has revealed the inability of government and the private sector to meet the demand
for land and housing. Spontaneous urbanization occurred mostly on scarce and therefore precious
agricultural land and dates back to the 1960s, though most growth occurred since 19865. The
rapid growth of informal settlements took place in a situation of oversupply of formal housing
units, albeit for a different population category. The average price of land for low-income housing
increased 23-fold between 1960 and 1993.
4 (GOPP, Upgrading of Informal settlements in Greater Cairo Region, Preliminary Report, Cairo, 1993, as quoted in El-
Batran, Manal & Arandel, Christian, A shelter of their own: informal settlement expansion in Greater Cairo and government
responses).
5 Estimates predict that between 1980 and 2025 nearly half of Egypt’s agricultural land will be lost to informal settlements
The Informal Sector in Waste Recycling in Egypt
18
20. Informal areas do not only house the urban poor. They also offer affordable housing to young,
educated families, including public service employees and university students. Through the
process of migration and urbanization, these communities mix, transform and add new values to
traditional ones. They find new patterns of organization, informal economy, social networks and
solidarity mechanisms. From the 70s to the 90s the social structure of informal areas changed
considerably, leading to the heterogeneous, culturally and socially incoherent informal areas
structure of the present. Before the 1970s informal areas were more like homogenous camps
formed by rural migration to the periphery of large Egyptian cities. Since 1975, increasing
urbanization and real-estate speculation forced many previously urban population groups into
informal areas.
The Egyptian government’s attitude towards informal settlements experienced a shift due to a
number of factors: one was pressure from international donors, another was social and security
reasons which date back to the early 90s. These were linked to religious groups having become
primary service providers, delivering aid to widows, health care for the poor, clothing and food to
poor families and the sick in many informal neighborhoods in Egypt. Economic deprivation,
political passivity and the absence of state security control provided the conditions for ideologies
of violence. The analysis of the social roots of Islamic militants reveals the extent to which
informal areas bred political violence in the early 90s. Many came from Mokattam/Manchiyet
Nasser, neighbours of the zabbaleen. It became urgent for the government to respond with social
and physical upgrading of informal settlements. A “National Upgrading Policy of Informal Urban
Settlements’ went into effect in 1993 and according to United Nations Development Programm’s
(UNDP) 2005 Egyptian Human Development Report more than half a billion Euros were spent on
these massive projects.6 Studies report that the overall impact has been less than expected with
continued migration, unemployment and poverty still outpacing government resources.
In 2006 President Hosni Mubarak announced an ambitious programme for improving people’s
standards of living in his election platform for his new six-year term. It included 12 projects
related to housing, education, health care, transportation and infrastructure, access to clean water
and sewage system networks in squatter settlements. The programme aims to improve randomly
built areas by guaranteeing property rights while extending water and electricity services, building
schools, providing medical care and security services.7 The Fifth 5-year (2007-2012) Plan for
Economic and Social Development8 specifies guide-lines for participatory local development
policies in poor urban areas. The government of Egypt has adopted four strategies for addressing
informal settlements:
• upgrading,
• redevelopment,
• containment and
• demolishing.
6 UNDP and Ministry of Planning, Egypt Human Development Report: A New Social Contract. Cairo, 2005
7 Source: www.ndp.org.eg
8 Source: Egypt State Information Service, http://www.sis.gov.eg
http://www.sis.gov.eg/En/EgyptOnline/Miscellaneous/000002/0207000000000000001336.htm
The Informal Sector in Waste Recycling in Egypt
19
21. It has set criteria for the definition of each.9 Under these criteria, Manchiyet Nasser, the largest
neighborhood which houses informal recyclers, qualified for upgrading. This has given the
recyclers a greater sense of land security, but has not led to titling or registration of property.
2.2 Business Aspects of Informality: International Contracting Threatens a Dynamic
Recycling Sector
In 2000 it became clear that government policy for the city of Cairo’s waste management was
heading towards privatization to multinational firms. A number of organizations felt there was a
need to prepare the way for the integration of the Zabbaleen as a serious technical input and as a
livelihood threatened by the advent of new entrants into the sector. A study undertaken in 2000
documented the magnitude, growth and vitality of that sector in the Greater Cairo area, as well as
its capacity to expand its service to new neighborhoods, generate income and employment, while
maintaining its high rate of 80% recycling10. For this study, Mokattam area was selected to gather
information about the following specific activities: collection, transportation, recovery of primary
materials, SMEs trading activities and small scale recycling industries. It showed that trading and
manufacturing networks had grown to cover the whole country from Alexandria to Aswan. The
industry had spawned its own dealers, its own centers of production and recycling, and its own
business culture of credit, trade and finance. The implications of this situation were that
influences felt in the informal recycling sector in Cairo reverberate all over the country and
influence a much larger economic sector of poverty stricken Egyptians than is documented and
quantified.
2.2.1 Response to Markets
The increase in the number of collection enterprises and corresponding increase in the number of
households served in Cairo over the last fifty years is indicative of the capacity of this informal
sector to grow and expand, and shows its comparative advantage over the formal sector. Its ability
to respond to demand-driven forces faster, and to design systems more flexibly has served it well
in braving the forces of change in the waste management systems of the city which never included
them in the dialogue or design of these systems.
2.2.3 Ownership of Land, Sorting Space and other Assets
To this day, very few residents in the informal neighborhoods where recyclers live have registered
their land or secured legal title to their property. However, they have established informal
ownership to the land which is not officially recognized or registered with the government, but
which is honored by residents who know and recognize each others’ rights to the land on which
they live and work. This has facilitated the sale of land and other transactions such as renting
property for housing, trading or recycling activities. It has allowed them to rent and sell such
property to generate income and capital to invest in their diverse enterprises. The long years of co
existing on the fringes of the city have engendered enough trust to allow them to accept
documents which transfer property informally in recognition that they are all at risk of not being
able to claim their right to the land if and when the government decides to evict or relocate them.
9 It is noteworthy to mention that Hernando de Soto presented nine types of informality based on three
criteria: land tenure, zoning and type of construction.
10 CID Consulting “The Informal Solid Waste Sector in Egypt: Prospects for Formalization”. A study conducted
by CID Consulting for the Ford Foundation and funded by the Institute of International Education (IIE).
October 2000.
The Informal Sector in Waste Recycling in Egypt
20
22. 2.2.4 Capital
The network of social and personal relations within such communities is in effect a form of
collateral. Social norms and pressure become the mechanism for enforcement of the repayment of
the debt. The reputation of the borrower is at stake compromising his standing in the community
and the trust of his compatriots in the trade, thus jeopardizing future business opportunities.
Studies show the dependence of the recycling enterprises on informal sources of capital and
limited access to, and utilization of any formal sources of financing, such as the Social Fund for
Development (SFD). While these opportunities are created through some of the non profits, they
do not meet the growing need and demand for financing. As the number of trading and recycling
enterprises increases so does the demand for diverse sources of capital. This creates an
opportunity to develop appropriate programs for such endeavors.
2.2.5 Labor and Wages
As with labor markets in the Greater Cairo area, workers operate informally in this sector. The
average number of workers in the garbage collectors' enterprise, i.e. the garbage collector, his
unpaid family workers and other paid wage earners who collectively work on the collection routes
and recovery of primary materials is 7.4 persons. The average number of workers in the trading
enterprises is 4.6 workers/enterprise and 6.7 in each of the recycling workshops.
2.2.6 Growth in Recycling Enterprises
Recycling industries in Egypt have expanded, diversified and increased in number over the last 25
years. The 1980s ushered in a move towards investing in recycling workshops starting in the
Mokattam settlement but now extends to the entire country. Initiatives to start such endeavors
were supported by external funding and technical assistance. From 1996 to 2000, the number of
workshops in Mokattam increased by approximately 40%. The recycling workshops in the area
created approximately 43% new job opportunities during that four-year period (1996-2000).
These recycling workshops rely on the primary material sorted by the waste collectors and sold
through intermediaries. They have also become a magnet for youth from other parts of the city.
Some workers commute to the settlement on a daily basis, while others have relocated and now
reside in the settlement. The size, scope and activities of the recycling workshops vary. Some
specialize in a particular step of the recycling process, having invested in only one machine.
Others have larger investments and undertake a multi-step process in the recycling of certain
types of primary materials. The recycling workshops produce both final products and
intermediary products. Their clients are located throughout the country and the city. The
intermediary products are sold to larger workshops and often to large-scale industrial plants in
and around Cairo as well as those around the country, such as the 6th of October, the 10th of
Ramadan, Alexandria, and Suez.
2.2.7 Trading Networks
Most traders are part of the informal sector, but a significant number of formal sector traders are
increasingly attracted to this large and lucrative market. Intermediary traders buy the bulk of the
materials recovered by the garbage collectors on a weekly basis. Traders in recycling
neighborhoods generally specialize in one type of material such as glass or plastic, and sometimes
even on sub-categories of these materials such as PET plastic water bottles or PVC, etc. On
average, it takes a week to accumulate quantities that are large enough to sell to their customers:
traders from other markets around the country, and in some cases large manufacturing plants.
The Informal Sector in Waste Recycling in Egypt
21
24. • High labor and employment generation vital for unskilled and semi-skilled labor force.
• Higher than national average wages offered to workers.
• Positive aspects of capital accumulation and investment – both for local and export economy as
borne out by the export of PET plastic, and recovered empty paint cans.
• A high degree of product differentiation in response to new demands and technological
advancement in the recycling industries.
Over the last two decades, an increasing number of usages have evolved for more and more of the
primary materials. As new market demand arises, the appropriate technology is adopted, and new
channels for market distribution and production are instated.
When the Egyptian government adopted privatization of solid waste management to international
companies, new recycling contractual quotas (20% of waste) were required of them. These were
far lower than the informal sector’s recovery rate of 80%. This was bound to adversely affect an
entire industrial recycling chain, strain scarce natural resources, and increase the amount of waste
to be landfilled. In 2008, the recycling formal industry was feeling the effects in a serious way.
This generated an interest on their part to examine and correct imbalances suffered by the
informal sector recyclers caused by current systems. They have come to recognize that the
informal sector is a private sector in its own right and have tangibly felt the impact of their
reduced access to materials from waste generators on their own large industries.
Prior to privatization, feedstock from the informal sector had been flowing regularly to large
formal private sector recycling industries. Since privatization to intermational companies, the
steady supply of materials dwindled. These large industries are becoming a new, and potentially
important actor in any scheme to integrate the informal sector in waste recycling. They have
unwittingly become advocates for the informal private sector recyclers which will affect several
fronts.
2.3.1 Livelihoods, Income and Employment
So far efforts to integrate the informal sector within the multinational companies have not been
successful: multinationals expect traditional collectors/recyclers to act as a collection crew only,
i.e. to not take the waste away to their homes for recycling and to work for a wage. They also
expect them to put in eight hour working days even if they can cover their routes in 4 hours. And
last but not least, they expect them to do anything which is required in the companies’ garages
and transfer stations of multinationals. The informal sector collectors who collect only for the
purpose of recycling see no purpose to the invitation extended by the private international firms.
This has forced multinationals to recruit unemployed youths and train them to be collectors. Few
recruits find the occupation appealing and those who are recruited soon drop out. High turnover
rates among these new collection crews drew the multinationals to accept to hire the traditional
collectors on their own terms, i.e. have them work on the route only for as long as it took to finish
the rounds, turn a blind eye to the continued practice of taking the mixed waste back to their
homes to sort and recycle, and continue to use their own trucks instead of using the contractor’s
trucks as the contract stipulated. To date, the zabbaleen still transport mixed household waste in
their trucks, take it to their homes, sort it and profit from it. This is expected to end when, and if,
contractual terms in the contracts between the governorate and the international companies are
enforced. Up till now though, the Contract Monitoring Unit established in the CCBA and Giza
Cleaning and Beautification Agency (GCBA), have not fined the multinationals for these practices as
The Informal Sector in Waste Recycling in Egypt
23
25. they too recognize the prolematic situation which these companies find themselves in and do not
want to jeopardize the system any more than it currently is.
2.3.2 Exploitation of Household Waste Collectors by Middlemen
When the multinationals gave in to hiring the traditional collectors, none of them had formal
businesses registered and thus could not sign contracts nor represent a large group of collectors.
They had found it sufficient to operate with the licenses which had been granted by the CCBA and
GCBA. Only the waahis had the forward looking inclination: they had registered small private
companies, NGOs and cooperatives as well. Once more the traditional collectors found themselves
needing the intermediation of the waahis, but this time with the international contractors. Many of
these contractors paid the intermediaries fair wages for each collector hired, but the middlemen
passed only the smallest fraction of it to the collector. Once more, exploitation was their lot. In
Cairo, the traditional collectors are now open to the exploitation by middlemen who possess
licenses and are therefore able to sub-contract with international companies directly.
2.3.3 Competition for the Waste by Scavengers
Multinational companies do not offer door to door collection services as that would have pushed
the cost of their bids beyond competitiveness. Placing household waste in the public domain
(street communal containers) has meant that the traditional waste collectors have to contend with
scavengers who now have access to waste pooling sites in neighbourhoods serviced by the
international companies. This has reduced the amount of waste available for recycling as some
residents have changed their habits and now bring their waste to pooling sites. It has also meant
that the city has become much dirtier than prior to international contracting as scavengers litter
around the containers they scavenge, stray cats and dogs complete the damage and scavengers
venture into the city on donkey pulled carts. These were banned in the 1990’s but became an
every day occurrence again in 2006!
2.3.4 Residents’ Displeasure
Despite the poor social image of the traditional collectors and their services, and in spite of the
actual take over of the waste collection by the international companies, many Cairenes still prefer
the door to door service of the traditional collectors. Cultural bias and class aspects keep
residents prefering not to bring their waste down to a waste pooling site. Lonstanding
relationships with specific collector families, bred over decades, have also led to the establishment
of social ties between collectors and residents so that the relationship is an important aspects of
the system. A point of contention though is that these service recipients are obliged to pay twice
for the same service: once on their electric bill , as the fee for waste collection service became an
integral part of the electric bill as per the Egyptian government decree, to the international firms,
and a second time directly to the door to door collector, albeit voluntarily and informally.
Furthermore, residents are displeased with the increasingly unsanitary appearance of their
neighborhoods as waste pooling sites overflow with waste, containers are not large enough for the
large volume of waste and scavengers leave the space surrounding containers with mounting
volumes of litter.
2.3.5 Resettlement Issues
Another threat is the potential resettlement to the outskirts of the growing city of Cairo.
This would conceivably increases transport cost, travel time and labor cost in the recycling trade.
This feature is discussed in Chapter 4.
The Informal Sector in Waste Recycling in Egypt
24
26. 2.4 Challenges Faced by Informal Sector Recyclers
This study conducted focus groups with small, informal and semi formal recoverers, recyclers,
collectors, and traders. These uncovered numerous constraints faced by them:
1. They have no fixed or predictable income.
2. They are dispersed throughout the country.
3. They are exploited by traders who own depots and who employ them
4. They risk arrest, confiscation of their donkey and cart and are harrassed by police as they
roam around the city of Cairo on donkey carts which were banned in 1990 on the streets of Cairo.
5. They are forced into the trade due to unemployment or as an interim stage in search for
employment.
Traditional informal sector recyclers express the following challenges:
2.4.1 Poor Ability to Organize
From the outset the exploitative situation the traditional waste collectors found themselves in was
based on the weak position of the collectors and the stronger position of the more powerful ones
who organized them. In the first decades of their presence in Cairo, the waahis exploited them.
Later, it was the more powerful among them who had been able to negotiate with the government
and obtain licenses to service a large number of apartment blocks. The latter kept the smaller
collectors breeding pigs for them. The smaller waste collectors were content to service a smaller
number of flats (between 350-500) and accepted the exploitation by the more powerful men in
the trade. Exploitation also came from the pig merchants who seldom paid them the true value of
the animals they sold claiming that a fair proportion of the herd was sick and not fit for slaughter.
Their first taste of fair and equitable organization was when they formed a non–profit
organization, the AGCCD and an external facilitator, in the form a consulting firm Environmental
Quality International (E.Q.I.) was charged with implementing a credit scheme financed by OXFAM
to introduce recycling of non-organics in the neighborhood. Their second experience was when
Association for the Protection of the Envirionment (A.P.E.), another non-profit, organized a girls’
and women’s community recycling enterprise based on source segregated cloth and paper. Again,
this was facilitated by a group of external volunteers. Thus the people in that trade had not
learned to trust each other and organize themselves in a common front, holding one opinion and
one view with which to negotiate.
More recently, the agreement with the multinationals involved the mediation of both the powerful
middlemen, either from among them or from among the waahis, or from their NGO, which turned
around and granted the right to distribute labor and concessions to routes to the same powerful
middlemen who had negotiated independently with the multinationals. The NGO had become co-
opted by the more powerful men in the neighborhood and no longer represented the interests of
the poor and the voiceless.
Organizing for true representation is thus one of the most critical constraints facing the informal
sector recyclers. It is even more difficult for roamers and scavengers of waste pooling sites and
dumpsites than for the traditional zabbaleen.
2.4.2 Lack of Transparency of the System
The system has been marked by a lack of transparency from its inception. Be it the terms
negotiated by the waahis and the local authorities, or the terms negotiated between them and the
The Informal Sector in Waste Recycling in Egypt
25
27. middlemen (moallemiin) or the present terms between the moallemiin and the multinationals, and
even the terms of contract monitoring for the present multinationals. The traditional waste
collectors therefore find themselves in the unenviable position of not having accurate information
and not knowing who to trust.
2.4.3 Financial Constraints
Access to capital has been listed as one of the most critical constraints to growth in that sector. To
date, the need for capital and financing has not been adequately addressed as lending institutions
are currently not easily accessible to that business sector. Their informality, lack of education and
lack of collateral all place contraints to their accessing formal financial markets. It is mostly NGO’s
that have reached that market.
2.4.4 Legal and Contractual Obstacles
Foreign companies are encouraged to cooperate with traditional garbage collectors, because of
their vast numbers, their accumulated experience in the field of collecting, transporting, recycling
and disposing of municipal waste. Representatives of the Italian and Spanish company expressed
a willingness to negotiate with one entity representing the traditional collectors within the
requirements of their contract with the government of Cairo. The traditional sector needs to learn
and start the process of forming one legal entity to represent the larger group of individual
collectors who could then act as a sub-contractor to the main contractor.
Foreign companies are contractually required to recover 20% of waste only. There is no contractual
incentive to reach the 80% recovery rate currently achieved by the traditional collectors. The
traditional garbage collectors, who inherited this business from their fathers, whose traditions as
private sector operators go back fifty years, would not easily accept to be employed just as a
collection crew by the multinationals.
2.4.5 Social Issues Related to Stigma of Trade and Perception of Society at Large
Handling garbage is not an attractive occupation, neither physically nor culturally, and does not
constitute an attractive option for Egyptian labor. People do not consider the sector an option for
educated youths and do not respect the work waste workers do. Much as people appreciate
having their wase collected from their doorstep on a semi daily basis, yet they do not approve of
the unseemly appearance of the traditional collectors, nor their soiled clothes and trucks.
2.4.6 Need for Skills Upgrading – Training
New labor entrants in the waste sector need training, which entails cost, and will lead to higher
wages. The traditional collectors are willing to cooperate and to upgrade their collection and
sorting techniques, but this requires planned interventions. In 1986, the consulting firm E.Q.I.
implemented a credit scheme which deliberately targeted pig breeders to convert them into
plastic, paper, cloth recyclers. This scheme was the genesis of the industry which exists in
Mokattam today. A similar scheme is required to convert the collectors into contractual partners
to the government and large recycling firms.
2.4.7 Operational Issues
The traditional garbage collectors’ means of handling waste lack appropriate hygienic standards.
This renders them an unattractive institutional partner. A number of traditional garbage collectors
opt for continuing to raise animals on the organic waste. This further makes them unattractice as
partners to local authorities, local companies or multinationals. Alternative breeding
The Informal Sector in Waste Recycling in Egypt
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28. configurations need to be sought. The current options of compacting garbage or disposing of it in
landfills leads to a waste of raw materials and of job opportunities. Now that Climate Change
opens up prospects for carbon trading from the recovery and processing of organic waste, new
avenues for changing current operational processes are opening up offering alternative uses for
the organic fraction of the waste. They will need the mediation of consulting firms, donors, and
advocates as well as investors and social entrepreneurs.
2.4.8 Informality
The thriving informal sector is a boon and a bane at one time. Interventions to correct the sector’s
hazardous work methods and sub standard products sector are necessary and are potentially
feasible. They will require policy interventions coupled with the temperate application of laws
until the industry is steered through the tricky transition from sub-standard, uncontrolled and
hazardous production to quality production based on specifications and standards. Formalizing
the zabbaleen would address the aspect of labor shortage, and keep residents satisfied with door
to door collection, but it will also maintain health standards for finished products and industrial
safety standards for workers in that sector. Traditional garbage collectors have still not united
under the umbrella of one single federation or entity. This has dissuaded foreign companies from
cooperating with them.
2.4.9 Difficulty in Acquiring and Asserting Ownership of Property
Ownership of property, albeit informally, has emerged as an integral element in the informal
sector activities. The majority of informal sector recyclers live and work in the same place. They
purport to “own” the premises in which their enterprise is based, albeit informally, as well as the
equipment that they use, vehicles or otherwise. The availability of sorting and storage space is a
critical aspect of trading and growth in recycling markets. The establishment of depots all over
the city, and indeed the country, is linked to the availability of land, warehouse space, and use of
space in the home as an unregistered business in informal neighborhoods. Giving the informal
property holders legal title to these assets may allow them to use these in various transactions in
the formal and financial markets whether they are used as collateral or guarantees. Formalization
of property is a critical step towards the security which can later contribute to upgrading the trade.
2.4.10 Inadequate Market Information and Market Intelligence
Prices and market information are available in the immediate neighborhood and vicinity. More
information becomes available as traders and recyclers create links and networks with other
trading neighborhoods and markets. However, poor communication and inaccurate information
lead to cut throat competition and recyclers relying on windfall profits rather than sustained
markets. This makes them an inappropriate partner to formal sector industries and increases their
preference for informality, and their vulnerability.
2.5 Non-Profit Community Groups
A significant institutional actor in the informal recycling sector has been NGO’s- both local and
international - and faith based organizations.
2.5.1. Association of Garbage Collectors for Community Development (AGCCD)
It launched the first credit program for small and medium enterprise development in 1983 in the
informal neighborhood of Mokattam garbage collectors (the zabbaleen) through the intervention
The Informal Sector in Waste Recycling in Egypt
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30. the exclusion particular to garbage collector communities, would probably not benefit to a
measurable degree from the extension of credit – micro or medium. Technical, social, and
marketing difficulties would probably have caused their enterprise to falter.14
The Rag and Paper Recycling Centers15 designed and delivered income generating/poverty
alleviation initiatives for adolescent girls and women in the informal sector, in which was
embedded a lifelong learning model in the field of non-formal education. It focused on lifelong
learning skills to empower mothers of the future; to build on the expertise of experts - girls and
women involved in the manual sorting of municipal household waste in Cairo, to create conditions
of work revolving around recovery and recycling of man-made waste with dignity, and to empower
adolescents and adults to participate, as literate adults, in community and society. The projects
began in 1988 and 1992 alternatively and continue to the present day. They have become self-
sustaining. One did not require external donor assistance while the other invested in inputs from
partners and donors such as the Ford Foundation, ASMAE, and others. Egyptian private sector in-
kind donations and individual cash contributions as well as consulting time and expertise given on
a voluntary basis helped get them established. Revenues from the recycling enterprise and
capacity building to manage these enterprises has sustained them.
2.6.2 Lesson Two: Source Segregation of Household Waste into Two Fractions (Organic
and Non Organic) is Feasible
In 1992, A.P.E. tested a source segregation of garbage in two neighborhoods in Cairo (Manial and
Deir el Malak) to develop new household level interventions which would reflect on the informal
waste workers and the city16. The methodology included door to door communication and public
awareness campaigns to raise awareness regarding the importance of at source separation.
Findings were that 65% of residents in the two sample neighborhoods continued to separate their
garbage at source into two components: organic and non-organic, for two years. Residents were
motivated to participate because of the information given to them about the hazards of mixing
heavy metals with food waste and the attendant effects this had on human health and the food
grown with contaminated compost. Residents were given a further incentive to participate by
receiving nominal prizes for having screened and source segregated their waste efficiently, at the
end of each 2-3 month period.
The plan was to deliver the organic waste to composting plants around Cairo while keeping the
non-organic in Mokattam to sort and separate for processing and re-manufacturing in the micro-
enterprise workshops run by the men. The driving concern behind it was women’s exposure to
health hazards while sorting. This pilot project was financed by the Ford Foundation and results
indicated that:
• sorting time was reduced by 50% (two instead of four hours per day),
14 Assaad, Ragui and Rouchdy, Malak. “Poverty and Poverty Alleviation Strategies in Egypt”. A Report Submitted to The
Ford Foundation, Cairo, Egypt, January 1998.
15 Kamel, Laila R. Iskandar. Mokattam Garbage Village, Cairo, Egypt. Published by Laila R. Iskandar Kamel and printed by
Stallion Graphics. Cairo, 1994
16 Assaad, Marie and Moharram, Ayman. Final Report on the Separation-at-source Scheme as Implemented by the
Association for the Protection of the Environment. Submitted to the Ford Foundation, January 1995.
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