While working to turn waste from the Nile into artistic and creative products, VeryNile also aims to transform the lives of those who depend on the Nile and to empower their communities.
The VeryNile story started in 2019 with the initial aim of helping NGOs to communicate better and be more attractive to potential donors, according to Alban de Ménonville, managing director and co-founder of the organisation.
“Later, we decided to focus on one initiative: protecting the environment in Egypt because this has an impact on everything else in the country – agriculture, education, health, and so on. Everything is related to the environment,” he said.
Then came the founders’ decision to centre their attention on the River Nile, the source of most of Egypt’s water.
“Some 95 per cent of the water that Egypt needs is from the Nile. It is also a historical symbol and the birthplace of civilisation. It is shared by a lot of African countries, and the water from the River ends up in the Mediterranean Sea, which is also shared by 21 countries. It is a River that affects a lot of countries from Uganda to Greece and France,” de Ménonville noted.
VeryNile started in an apartment in Zamalek, though one not overlooking the Nile, with a group of passionate professionals who work full-time organising cleaning events on the Nile. During one of these events, some fishermen came to help because they had their own boats and knew the river intimately from their work.
Initially, the fishermen used to bring items they had collected from the Nile to the organisation’s office in Zamalek. VeryNile was then collecting plastic bottles and sending them straight to recyclers.
Moving to its present headquarters on the beautiful Al-Qursaya Island three years ago gave VeryNile more room to empower the community around it, create jobs, and inspire change, all as a result of its cleaning and other activities in the Nile.
It widened its cooperation with fishermen, asking them to collect more plastic waste as it could be dropped off at a more accessible point. It bought the plastic from the fishermen at higher than market prices, opening up new business opportunities for them. It also started to collect other items because it now had more space to store them.
VeryNile started working with four fishermen. Now there are some 200 working with the organisation in Cairo, in addition to its office in Assiut in Upper Egypt.
Its headquarters are accessible via a short ferry ride, and once on the Al-Qursaya Island the Al-Ahram Weekly met Abu Sayed, one of several workers who sort the waste that has been collected from the river, wash collected bottles after removing their caps, and prepare the whole to be compressed into bales and shipped off to recycling plants.
VeryNile also finds a way to break and compress the bottle caps. “They are shaped into hard polyethylene sheets that are then cut with a special machine to make tables, chairs, and other pieces of furniture,” said Rania, a resident of the Island who has worked in recycling since 2023.
New opportunities: Its new headquarters have allowed VeryNile to work more on the needs and opportunities it identifies and engage more with the community on the Island.
Local women have been trained to work with VeryNile in upcycling plastic bags, for example.
In the upcycling warehouse, Um Kamal, Karima, Um Donia, Um Youssef and other Island residents were engaged in cutting, embroidering, and sewing the upcycled bags to produce useful products when the Weekly visited.
These can later be displayed in the organisation’s shop or at events that VeryNile takes part in.
“The women have been trained to sort, sterilise, and iron discarded plastic bags to make reusable tote bags, pencil cases, make-up bags, and so on. They embroider some of them and attach our logo before finishing the products,” said Fatma, the head of the plastics upcycling team.
The team also produces crocheted plastic curtains, weaving baskets, table lights, and other products from discarded bags.
“Weaving baskets from plastic bags is a hard and time-consuming job. They are inspired by traditional designs. I am the only one here who can weave the first parts of these baskets at the moment,” said Um Kamal proudly.
She is working on training more women from the team.
Finding that most of the adults on the Island cannot read and write, VeryNile has offered them free Arabic lessons. Another initiative is Kids on the Nile in which the organisation offers an after-school programme for 60 children in environmental science, Arabic, and Maths.
Another success story is that of Um Nada, a resident who approached VeryNile shortly after moving to the island and suggested that she could cook for the team. She started by cooking meals in her own house, carrying them to the organisation’s offices on trays at lunchtime.
“Um Nada’s initiative was later transformed into Shoka wa Megdaf (a fork and an oar), an eco-friendly food space on the top floor of the offices overlooking the green areas of this beautiful Island,” said Ali Al-Demerdash, the Weekly’s guide who used to work with VeryNile and still likes to visit whenever possible.
“Um Nada still cooks lunch for the team in the food space, and during events all the participants, the fishermen, and the rest of the team have lunch made by Um Nada, who has now recruited a lot of helpers from among local people,” he said.
The visit coincided with one by 60 students from a French university who were on a six-day trip to Egypt to learn more about water and pollution. Part of their programme is to spend a day at VeryNile participating in a boat trip to clean the Nile and in a plastic upcycling workshop. They also had a special lunch cooked for them by Um Nada.
VeryNile runs different events on a weekly basis. However, one of its very special events was the second edition of the Nile Parade held in February.
Boats carrying people to the island were decorated with flowers, and children were singing. The parade was a way of connecting people from the island community with others outside the island.
“Both groups are very attached to the Nile. They want to do something for the river – they just do not know how to do it,” the boatman who took the French students on their cleaning trip said, sharing memories of the parade.
“At VeryNile, we are trying to highlight the challenges and come up with the solutions in a positive way,” de Ménonville said. “Collecting waste is a transitional phase to throw light on the challenge of cleaning up the Nile.”
“We invite schools, universities, the private sector, and government officials to visit us and to see the nature of the challenges that we need to solve. We do not want to keep collecting waste. We want to prevent the plastic waste reaching the Nile in the first place,” he said.
Two more branches of VeryNile are due to open their doors in Sohag and Minya in Upper Egypt before the end of 2025 – clear signs that it is working hard to accomplish its mission.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 22 May, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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