“From Waste to Good Taste” was a three-day initiative, held in Downtown Cairo in April, that worked to raise waste productivity and spread awareness about issues related to recycling. It was a fund-raising event organised by the Egyptian Clothing Bank and is now in its third year. It illustrated the value of recycling on the ground and served as a venue for those working in recycling as well as those who want to learn more.
Aiming to raise awareness and attract more young people to work in the recycling field, the initiative offered various panel discussions that shed light on the experiences of people who have been working in the recycling business for years. They aimed to provide insights to those who want to start their own businesses in recycling.
This year, the initiative attracted some 7,000 visitors and participants in comparison to 2,000 last year and a few hundred in the first year, said Manal Saleh, the Clothing Bank’s chief executive officer. The Clothing Bank, she explained, is a charity organisation that has been working on collecting old or used clothes, treating them, and distributing them for free to the poor and needy.
During the UN COP 27 Climate Change Conference held in Sharm El-Sheikh in 2022, the Ministry of the Environment started the bank as a creative recycling foundation, widening the scope of its mission and enhancing its activities in the recycling field.
“The bank started attracting more volunteers and university students interested in sustainability and protecting the environment. We also started to help more young entrepreneurs interested in working on recycling various materials, namely glass, plastic, paper, leather and, above all, clothes. Even fashion designers have started to rely more on recycled materials in their products,” Saleh said.
The idea of the initiative came to raise awareness and provide a venue for those working, interested, or wanting to know more about using waste to produce “good taste” products. “The 20 workshops organised through the initiative have provided the technicalities or the know-how for recycling different materials. One could see the products with one’s own eyes in the 20-booth market area,” Saleh said.
The whole initiative together with the market and the workshop areas provided a hands-on experience for Zainab Amr, a volunteer who studies fashion design at the Faculty of Applied Art at Helwan University.
“Studying fashion is strongly related to upcycling and sustainability. So, it was fun for me to take part in an event that had a clear application to my area of study. That is in addition to meeting real fashion designers and listening to their experiences,” she said enthusiastically.
She was keen to show her favourite piece from the market area of the initiative when it took place in April, an elegantly designed three-seat white sofa that was fully stuffed with recycled material.
“All that stuffing could have found its way to a waste site and harmed the environment if it had not been used to produce a good-taste sofa that we can use daily,” she said.
In the same room at the event, there was a tent completely covered with old and used clothes. This was a symbol of the amount of material that may go to waste if we do not protect the environment by recycling clothes, explained a woman from the Clothing Bank’s Mending Department. She also showed off an elegant waistcoat made from a torn pair of denim trousers.
The workshops area at the event included workshops on revitalising leather waste from old bags or pieces of scrap leather, upcycled accessories from beads, buttons, and small pieces of left-over cloth, fabric manipulations using a technique called smoking to give a 3-D effect to newly created pieces, tie it together macrame using left-over yarns, and spoon and fork repurposing making good and creative use of bent or broken old cutlery.
There were also workshops on elastic waistband pants, which invited participants to sew a pair of trousers from recycled materials, patch and preserve for patchwork products, and recycling plastic, said Mohamed Mustafa, also known as “Suffara,” meaning “whistle,” the supervisor of the workshop area. He acquired the name because he quickly responds to calls for help.
The circular economic collage workshop was also interesting in that it used a card game to cast light on the circular economy and why it is better than the linear economy. It is one way of closing the production circle without producing waste. “The workshop proves through games that the circular economy is better for our planet,” Suffara said.
At the entrance of the area, there was an interactive installation designed by multidisciplinary artist and spatial designer Hamid Al-Maghrabi called Alf Khatwa Aziza. This was inspired by a famous Egyptian phrase that means “a thousand precious steps” – one way of welcoming visitors to one’s home in a traditional Egyptian way.
Al-Maghrabi had used nearly 1,000 unpaired shoes donated to the Clothing Bank in the installation to express a literal and symbolic interpretation of the saying. Each shoe in the installation represented a gesture of hospitality and proof of Egyptian generosity.
He said that the installation was not just a wall but was also a tribute to the power of the steps we take towards one another and the collective soul of a community that always makes for more.
Within the same context was a partially woven mat propped up on its loom to express the value of collective production. The yarns were all made from colourful old clothes cut into thin straps and tied together.
“It is a collectively produced piece of art that each participant is supposed to take part in by weaving one or two rows as a symbol of the fruit of cooperation and collective work. It is going to be donated to a children’s hospital at the end of the three days of the event,” explained Suffara.
The present writer enjoyed taking part in the collective production of the mat by weaving three rows and taking a couple of pictures. I was also happy to take part in the “shreds to life: reviving paper waste” workshop because it helped me make better use of scrap paper.
It was an interesting hands-on experience in how to shred used paper, blend it in a food blender with plenty of water to make a paste, and then iron it in a special ironing machine to produce recycled paper.
Unfortunately, there was not time to take part in the “fold and bend” workshop that transforms recycled paper into notebooks for people of all ages, especially young people, according to Wessam Wafik, the organiser of both workshops who makes a living from paper recycling.
I took home two sheets of recycled paper that I made in the workshop.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 1 May, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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