In environmental activism circles around the world, sustainability has been the buzzword for the last decade or so and for good reason. Earlier last month, local and international activists convened in Cairo to discuss this issue.
"Towards a Culture of Sustainable Development: Economies and Environment" was the conference's title, which captures the essence of the issues raised and experiences shared in this get together. It was mainly concerned with the cultural aspects of sustainable development: how people's everyday actions define the sustainability of their society, and how a society as a whole self-organizes to handle and to benefit from its waste products (i.e. recycling).
Its prime focus was, therefore, the subculture which deals with waste. This subculture is known by many names such as garbage collectors, waste pickers, recyclers, and perhaps best of all reclaimers.
In the last few years in Egypt, the way in which the government has dealt with this subculture and the whole issue of waste management have both made headlines and stirred public dismay. This has accumulated in the appallingly increasing piles of garbage in all residential areas (Cairo's posh areas not excluded) over the last several months.
To draw conclusions and to understand this waste management crisis that Egypt faces, this conference served as an international gathering where people told their success stories so that they may be repeated elsewhere.
Facing a Global Crises
Laila Iskander, the conference's chairperson, commented that their networks (recyclers, environmental activists, and slum dwellers) are all linked on the big issue of climate change among others.
Dr. Mawaheb Abou Al-Azm from EEAA (Egypt Environmental Affairs Agency) defined the main crisis the world faces today as "a widening gap between what's available from natural resources and what's required of them."
Ann Leonard, an environmental campaigner and creator of the short film "The Story of Stuff" about the production and consumption cycle, implied that the problem may only be solved if we can slow down the current from its source by making a change in our consumption habits.
Hossam Allam from the Center for Environment and Development for the Arab Region and Europe (CEDARE) focused on the issue of electronic waste. Current estimates put the yearly amount of discarded electronic devices and components at 40 million tons a year.
Allam suggested that one viable solution to this problem is that a product tax program be implemented, which the consumer contributes to, so the company becomes obliged to take back their used products.
In India, as well as other developing countries, piles of e-waste stretch out endlessly in the slums. Slum Dwellers International (SDI) is a group aiming to change such situations from the ground up by working at the local level and engaging in negotiations with the state.
Sheela Patel from SDI acknowledged that negotiating with the state is not an easy feat and corruption often stands in its way. The group works with 7.5 million households in 70 cities in India alone.
Informal Development: A Local Crisis
Egypt like most developing countries has a considerable percentage of its citizens dwelling outside of the formal settlements overseen by the state and operating within the grip of its laws.
Manal Al-Batran, a Professor of Urban Planning at the Housing and Building National Research Center, posed the crucial question of how to achieve successful urban planning in Egypt. She had to admit at the end of her talk that no satisfying answer currently exists.
According to Al-Batran, Egyptian researchers divide non-formal settlements into two categories: those on public land, called squatter settlements, and those on private land, called informal settlements. Both are seeing an expected unprecedented growth in Egypt as the total population continues to grow.
"Since 2006, the government is not responsible for helping low income housing. Instead, the private sector, which gets land from the government at a subsidized rate, is the one responsible," she asserted.
Another major change in governmental policy took place in 2004. Before then, construction was prohibited on agricultural land, but after 2004, this prohibition was loosened to become a controlled prohibition.
When it comes to the topic of providing sufficient housing units to accommodate Egyptians in the near future, Al-Batran mentioned that current statistics point to an expected need for about four hundred thousand units per year, yet the current formal/governmental plan is to build only five hundred thousand units in the coming six years!
This, however, doesn't include figures for the expected construction of informal settlements. "The informal section doesn't get loans simply because they build, unregulated, without permits," she added.
Recycling: A Local Crisis
When it comes to recycling, Ann Leonard opines that the informal sector are the real experts in this area, and, therefore, must be involved.
She noted that recently there has been a mass migration of "dirty" waste management companies from the the US and the EU to developing countries. These companies manage waste by the not so efficient process of incineration, a waste treatment technology that involves the combustion of organic materials and/or substances.
These companies have come up with new names to brand their operations like waste to energy. "But incinerators destroy resources. They should be called waste of energy not waste to energy," Leonard commented.
On the other hand, recyclers at the conference agreed that any society as a whole benefits more from the human garbage treatment/recycling. First, by helping the people performing the recycling, who are usually in need of better living standards and employment.
Second, it helps keep money in the country. Third, the country gets carbon credit which is both good for the planet and is in itself of monetary value.
Arguments against the importance of helping recyclers and their "backwards" methods were met with the assertion that their backward technology is the only way recycling can be done efficiently.
This issue of garbage collection and recycling has recently made its impact in Egypt especially since the government decided in 2004 to hire foreign waste collection and management companies and to do without the service of Egyptian garbage collectors. The garbage collectors/recyclers community in Al-Moqattam were the ones who were affected the most by this decision.
Ezzat Naem Guindy of the Spirit of Youth group in Al-Moqattam spoke out to the Egyptian officials saying "we are ready to clean Cairo if you help us upgrade our systems."
In fact, they have been efficiently cleaning Cairo for a long time, but the government is yet to organize their efforts and help them obtain the tools needed to do their job more efficiently.
After the recent pig culling that took place in Egypt, and with the garbage collectors no longer interested in collecting organic waste from the streets of Cairo, the city's residents have seen how crucial the garbage collectors are to its cleanliness.
In its swine flu panic, the rash governmental decision to slaughter the garbage collectors' pigs has resulted in massive piles of garbage on every corner of the city. This is the exact opposite of what it aimed at simply because the reaction of Cairo's recyclers and their role wasn't taken into proper consideration.
On a more promising note, Mobinil, one of the largest mobile phone companies in Egypt, has started a pilot recycling project with a group of Egyptian recyclers called "The Spirit of Youth."
The project aims to train the group on mobile phone recycling techniques. Mobinil's CEO, Alex Shelby noted that "this pilot project [is] just starting but we would love to expand this project and we have every intention of doing so."
Youssef Faltas is an Egyptian freelance writer. He can be reached by sending an e-mail to sciencetech@iolteam.com.
"Towards a Culture of Sustainable Development: Economies and Environment" was the conference's title, which captures the essence of the issues raised and experiences shared in this get together. It was mainly concerned with the cultural aspects of sustainable development: how people's everyday actions define the sustainability of their society, and how a society as a whole self-organizes to handle and to benefit from its waste products (i.e. recycling).
Its prime focus was, therefore, the subculture which deals with waste. This subculture is known by many names such as garbage collectors, waste pickers, recyclers, and perhaps best of all reclaimers.
In the last few years in Egypt, the way in which the government has dealt with this subculture and the whole issue of waste management have both made headlines and stirred public dismay. This has accumulated in the appallingly increasing piles of garbage in all residential areas (Cairo's posh areas not excluded) over the last several months.
To draw conclusions and to understand this waste management crisis that Egypt faces, this conference served as an international gathering where people told their success stories so that they may be repeated elsewhere.
Facing a Global Crises
Laila Iskander, the conference's chairperson, commented that their networks (recyclers, environmental activists, and slum dwellers) are all linked on the big issue of climate change among others.
Dr. Mawaheb Abou Al-Azm from EEAA (Egypt Environmental Affairs Agency) defined the main crisis the world faces today as "a widening gap between what's available from natural resources and what's required of them."
Ann Leonard, an environmental campaigner and creator of the short film "The Story of Stuff" about the production and consumption cycle, implied that the problem may only be solved if we can slow down the current from its source by making a change in our consumption habits.
Hossam Allam from the Center for Environment and Development for the Arab Region and Europe (CEDARE) focused on the issue of electronic waste. Current estimates put the yearly amount of discarded electronic devices and components at 40 million tons a year.
Allam suggested that one viable solution to this problem is that a product tax program be implemented, which the consumer contributes to, so the company becomes obliged to take back their used products.
In India, as well as other developing countries, piles of e-waste stretch out endlessly in the slums. Slum Dwellers International (SDI) is a group aiming to change such situations from the ground up by working at the local level and engaging in negotiations with the state.
Sheela Patel from SDI acknowledged that negotiating with the state is not an easy feat and corruption often stands in its way. The group works with 7.5 million households in 70 cities in India alone.
Informal Development: A Local Crisis
Egypt like most developing countries has a considerable percentage of its citizens dwelling outside of the formal settlements overseen by the state and operating within the grip of its laws.
Manal Al-Batran, a Professor of Urban Planning at the Housing and Building National Research Center, posed the crucial question of how to achieve successful urban planning in Egypt. She had to admit at the end of her talk that no satisfying answer currently exists.
According to Al-Batran, Egyptian researchers divide non-formal settlements into two categories: those on public land, called squatter settlements, and those on private land, called informal settlements. Both are seeing an expected unprecedented growth in Egypt as the total population continues to grow.
"Since 2006, the government is not responsible for helping low income housing. Instead, the private sector, which gets land from the government at a subsidized rate, is the one responsible," she asserted.
Another major change in governmental policy took place in 2004. Before then, construction was prohibited on agricultural land, but after 2004, this prohibition was loosened to become a controlled prohibition.
When it comes to the topic of providing sufficient housing units to accommodate Egyptians in the near future, Al-Batran mentioned that current statistics point to an expected need for about four hundred thousand units per year, yet the current formal/governmental plan is to build only five hundred thousand units in the coming six years!
This, however, doesn't include figures for the expected construction of informal settlements. "The informal section doesn't get loans simply because they build, unregulated, without permits," she added.
Recycling: A Local Crisis
When it comes to recycling, Ann Leonard opines that the informal sector are the real experts in this area, and, therefore, must be involved.
She noted that recently there has been a mass migration of "dirty" waste management companies from the the US and the EU to developing countries. These companies manage waste by the not so efficient process of incineration, a waste treatment technology that involves the combustion of organic materials and/or substances.
These companies have come up with new names to brand their operations like waste to energy. "But incinerators destroy resources. They should be called waste of energy not waste to energy," Leonard commented.
On the other hand, recyclers at the conference agreed that any society as a whole benefits more from the human garbage treatment/recycling. First, by helping the people performing the recycling, who are usually in need of better living standards and employment.
Second, it helps keep money in the country. Third, the country gets carbon credit which is both good for the planet and is in itself of monetary value.
Arguments against the importance of helping recyclers and their "backwards" methods were met with the assertion that their backward technology is the only way recycling can be done efficiently.
This issue of garbage collection and recycling has recently made its impact in Egypt especially since the government decided in 2004 to hire foreign waste collection and management companies and to do without the service of Egyptian garbage collectors. The garbage collectors/recyclers community in Al-Moqattam were the ones who were affected the most by this decision.
Ezzat Naem Guindy of the Spirit of Youth group in Al-Moqattam spoke out to the Egyptian officials saying "we are ready to clean Cairo if you help us upgrade our systems."
In fact, they have been efficiently cleaning Cairo for a long time, but the government is yet to organize their efforts and help them obtain the tools needed to do their job more efficiently.
After the recent pig culling that took place in Egypt, and with the garbage collectors no longer interested in collecting organic waste from the streets of Cairo, the city's residents have seen how crucial the garbage collectors are to its cleanliness.
In its swine flu panic, the rash governmental decision to slaughter the garbage collectors' pigs has resulted in massive piles of garbage on every corner of the city. This is the exact opposite of what it aimed at simply because the reaction of Cairo's recyclers and their role wasn't taken into proper consideration.
On a more promising note, Mobinil, one of the largest mobile phone companies in Egypt, has started a pilot recycling project with a group of Egyptian recyclers called "The Spirit of Youth."
The project aims to train the group on mobile phone recycling techniques. Mobinil's CEO, Alex Shelby noted that "this pilot project [is] just starting but we would love to expand this project and we have every intention of doing so."
Youssef Faltas is an Egyptian freelance writer. He can be reached by sending an e-mail to sciencetech@iolteam.com.
