Egypt and other countries have been struggling with plastic waste for decades. The country’s consumption of plastic bags stood at an average of 124 bags per capita in 2015, equivalent to 12 billion per year, according to the Egypt Plastic Technology Centre of the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Ahmed Reda, assistant for industry affairs and the Technology and Industrial Innovation Centre supervisor, told Al-Ahram Weekly. The number rose to 14 billion in 2019.
In a bid to boost the government’s efforts to address this issue, a group of entrepreneurs has adopted a complementary approach, utilising technology and innovation to turn this challenge into a lucrative opportunity.
Egypt’s entrepreneurs have embarked on efforts to recycle plastic waste into renewable wealth and convert plastic into fuel and raw materials to be utilised in various industries. This new recycling industry has generated green job opportunities, prevented the waste of resources, and spared the earth centuries of plastic waste.
With the aim of prompting the transformation of waste into resources that can contribute to sustainable development, the Ministry of Environment released Waste Management Law 202 and its executive regulations in October 2020.
Many initiatives have since responded to the law’s environmental provisions, as it encourages safe recycling. They have also responded to the circular economy, which focuses on rationalising the use of natural resources and curbing the production of waste.
One of the organisations working to clean Egypt’s beaches of plastic waste is Banlastic Egypt. “We are determined to address the plastic waste crisis through three axes, starting with campaigns to clean the beaches. We will also spread awareness of the perils of plastic waste and work to end the production of single-use plastic,” Ahmed Yassin, Banlastic’s co-founder, explained.
“The world is suffering from plastic waste in the oceans that has now reached the size of the US state of Texas. Here in Egypt we have enough plastic waste that if reused could meet all the needs of the plastics industry. Yet, only a small percentage of it is recycled,” Yassin said.
“Since our beginning in 2018, we have amassed tons of waste and channelled 15 tons of it to companies that recycle it to support Egypt’s circular economy.
“Despite the intensity of the plastics crisis, we are now more capable of tackling it. Environmentalists have been eliminating plastic through numerous efforts; for instance, scientists in Britain have developed recyclable plastic that can be reused up to 40 times. As a result, single-use plastic products, which have been accumulating for years without decomposing, can now be reused, saving the earth from 50 years of plastics production.”
Similarly, Hussein Mohamed, the director of an Egyptian plastics recycling factory said that “we collect and buy plastic waste, including single-use plastic products, from manufacturers. Then we recycle it into plastic products to spare the environment from plastic pollution.”
Eager to turn plastic into long-lasting products, Mohamed created a way to make external floors and rooftop tiles of plastic. “It is not enough to just recycle plastic products; we must be willing to incorporate them into long-lasting products to avoid harming the environment by repeating the recycling process,” he said.
It took Hussein a year of trials to reach the ideal composition of the tiles, in which he combined sand and plastic to reduce intermolecular interactions and harmful plastic emissions.
MOVES AHEAD: The Waste Management Law contains regulations to limit single-use plastic products, including banning the selling, trading, and distributing of single-use plastic bags that do not fulfil the requirements of General Authority for Standardisation and Quality.
“Making plastic bags with a specific thickness has facilitated the process of collecting and recycling them, as well as limiting their volatility and stability in the sea and ocean waters, which is a threat to the ecosystem,” Minister of Environment Yasmine Fouad announced.
In June 2019, Red Sea Governor Ahmed Abdallah took the initiative of banning plastic bags in the governorate to help to preserve marine life, especially endangered sea mammals for which plastic residue has proved deadly through ingestion, suffocation, or poisoning.
The governor’s decision prohibited the use of plastic bags in restaurants, supermarkets, and pharmacies, as well as licensed bag manufacturing factories within the Red Sea governorate. It encouraged designing alternative, environmentally friendly plastic bags with the slogan “No to the Use of Plastic Bags” to raise awareness of the environmental dangers caused by the use of plastic on the land and marine ecosystem.
Following in his footsteps, the Environmental Affairs Agency in Alexandria held its first coordination meeting last April for its own “No to Plastic Bags” initiative.
The city banned plastic bags on its beaches and replaced them with safe alternatives. A timeline was announced to end plastic bag distribution. The governorate also supported the production of safe, fully biodegradable plastic products.
Furthermore, up to 36 awareness and cleaning campaigns were held on Alexandria and Matrouh beaches over the last two years. One of the campaigns has even entered the Guinness Book of Records as the longest beach-cleaning campaign stretching for eight km.
Head of the Environmental Affairs Agency for Alexandria and the West Delta region Sameh Riad Abdallah said that “we have cleaned the beaches and raised awareness of the harmful effects on marine life caused by the single-use plastic products such as plates, cups, and cutlery, and particularly plastic bags.
“When sea turtles consume plastic bags, believing they are jellyfish, they suffocate, which then causes swarms of jellyfish to spill onto the beaches and disrupt vacationers. After collecting beach plastic waste, we analyse it to determine the most common types of plastic products and trace them back to their source to eradicate them by increasing public awareness of who produces and takes them to the beach.”
FASHION INDUSTRY ON BOARD: Egyptian designers have reacted creatively to the state’s measures to eliminate the accumulated tons of single-use plastic bags.
Hind Riad and Mariam Hazem, two young designers, have created a recycled material called “Plastex,” a fabric made from plastic bags woven with cotton or polyester.
The fabric contributes to sustainable development as it is made of recycled plastic bags that could have ended up in the world’s seas and oceans. It also adds another manufacturing material for various products.
The two young designers used a combination of plastic and natural materials such as leather to create an eco-friendly product. All stages of the manufacturing process are subject to quality standards that forbid the use of any chemical components or toxic liquids.
Hazem said that “our project has created green job opportunities, in addition to raising awareness of eco-friendly concepts and initiatives. We are keen on promoting the positive effects our products have on the environment, so we attach a label to each product showing the number of plastic bags it is made of.”
“The label states the number of female workers that helped to weave the plastic bags used in each design as well, which we were eager to display, hoping to empower women in the craft market. This is one of our goals in helping the environment and society.”
Designers Yara Yassine and Rania Rafea have adopted the same approach, kicking off their project with the ambitious goal of providing job opportunities for Manshiet Nasser district residents in Cairo. It all started with Yassine observing the debris created by single-use plastic bags. She then came up with a way to recycle this plastic trash and presented it for her graduation project as a green product that eliminated plastic waste.
Building on that, Yassine and Rafea hired dozens of women to collect and sort plastic waste and then hired male workers to complete the manufacturing stages.
Plastic bags are sent to the project workshops to be pressed and remade into a leather-like material called Sabi that is later utilised to manufacture various products including bags. The designers do not use any environmentally harmful chemicals to dye the plastic.
ESTABLISHING ACCOUNTABILITY: According to the Waste Management Law, the waste generator or its holder bears the cost of the integrated management of all types of waste.
The law establishes the term “Extended Product Responsibility” to refer to the liability of business owners for products throughout their life cycle, including the post-consumer stage, such as the processes of classification, separation, collection, recycling, and disposal in a safe, healthy and eco-friendly manner.
Private companies have moved to comply with the law and its regulations on the expanded responsibility of the producer. Moreover, the Ministry of Environment has announced that six private-sector companies have signed the Voluntary Alliance Charter in support of environmental advocacy and plans for a circular economy.
The charter stipulates the safe disposal of plastic waste through recycling, among other environmental commitments.
Besides the private sector’s engagement, the government has also established partnerships with various institutions to support the environment. The Ministry of Environment is collaborating with different institutions and NGOs to raise awareness of single-use plastics.
VeryNile is one of the initiatives that has contributed actively to collecting plastic waste and informing the public of its problems. As Alban de Menonville, co-Founder of VeryNile, explained, “since day one, VeryNile has received unwavering support from the Ministry of Environment. The minister, Yasmine Fouad, is always involved in our projects, from the fishermen cleaning the Nile campaign to banning single-use plastic bags.
“The ministry has done a lot to help us obtain the necessary licenses to operate, spread the word by joining cleaning events, and even acknowledged the role of the 5,000 volunteers that helped remove plastic from the Nile.”
The VeryNile initiative aims to rid the River Nile of trash, pointing out that Egypt is accountable for one-third of the Mediterranean’s plastic pollution because the waste flows down the River Nile and right out into the sea.
Furthermore, the Nile is one of 10 rivers around the world that is responsible for 90 per cent of the rubbish in the world’s seas, according to the World Economic Forum. Thus, by cleaning the river VeryNile hopes to combat marine plastic pollution in the Mediterranean and the oceans.
Over the last five years, it has successfully removed 150 tons of plastic waste from the Nile, upcycled over 20,500 used plastic bags, and provided 60 job opportunities for local fishermen and another eight full-time jobs for plastic operators.
Local fishermen collect plastic from the Nile and sort it by type and colour before compacting it into bales and shipping it to recycling plants that convert the plastic into pellets and then into yarns that are used to make T-shirts, car seats, and sofa covers. They also use mixed plastic to generate energy as a substitute for fossil fuels.
Acting on the law’s recommendations on joining forces among the government, the private sector and civil society organisations, VeryNile has partnered with a number of environmentally conscious organisations to work on waste management.
It has extended an open invitation to the presidency to develop an ambitious plan to reduce the consumption of single-use plastics by developing the national agrarian sector. The plan calls for establishing a regulatory and financial framework that supports green organisations by applying tax exemptions to all environmentally friendly businesses.
All these efforts will be crowned with Egypt hosting and presiding over the upcoming UN COP27 Climate Change Conference in Sharm El-Sheikh. At the conference, more light will be shed on Egyptian efforts, in collaboration with VeryNile, Banlastic, and other NGOs, to end the plastic-waste crisis and the harms of single-use plastics.
*A version of this article appears in print in the 3 November, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
Short link: