Cairo has many urgent urban challenges such as electricity, water, waste and youth unemployment. In this innovation program we will try to connect two of them to explore solutions towards resolving them.

Much has been written about the waste issue in Cairo, such as this excerpt from the Huffington Post: “It is a landfill of interwoven problems. Rival collectors vying for the big business of trash fight over turf that used to be parceled out in an orderly way among a fixed number of garbage-collecting clans. Layers of corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy choke the system. The collapse of police forces in the revolution in early 2011 means that no one is enforcing what few rules there are.

As a result, Cairenes end up dumping much of their daily output of 17,000 tons of garbage on the street.

‘We have designed an unsustainable system for the city,” said Laila Iskandar, an expert in waste management. “It is a chain and no one thinks of the chain. Only the end point … Out of sight out of mind.’”

Some statistics

• In Egypt, most of the generated municipal solid waste ends up in open, public and random dumpsites, causing a serious threat to public health and the environment.
• Statistics shows that: Greater Cairo generates 15 Million ton (MT)/year and Egypt totals 21 MT/year (sweep‐net report, April 2014).
• In urban areas 40% to 90% of solid waste is collected while rural areas this percentage drops to 0% to 35%.
• Only 2.5% percent of solid waste is recycled in Egypt (sweepnet report, 2010).
• Recycling based manufacturing creates 25 jobs per year per 10,000 tons of solid waste African Dev. Bank report).
• Egypt generated 89.03 million tons of solid waste, including: 21 million tons of Municipal solid waste, 30 million tons Agricultural waste, 6 million tons of Industrial waste, 28,300 tons of Hazardous medical waste, 4 million tons of Construction and demolition waste, 25 million tons of Waterway cleansing waste & 3 million tons of Sludge.
• A large diversity of waste-types is generated across Egypt. It is estimated that 40% of the total waste generated is left uncollected, and that only a fraction of this collected waste is treated and disposed in facilities with a generally acceptable level of environmental control.
• In urban areas 40% to 90% of solid waste is collected while rural areas this percentage drops to 0% to 35%.

Alternatively, creative entrepreneurs & artists have already found ways to turn this problem into an opportunity, recycling waste and turning it into beautiful and useful objects, that sometimes even turn into businesses. It goes without saying that it’s the artist community that can ‘reframe’ waste and give it new meaning and purpose. Not typical art pieces, but ranging from furniture to playgrounds. Some possible examples include: http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/recycled-art-masterpiece-made-from-junks/

A great example is also TerraCycle, an International upcycling and recycling company that collects difficult-to-recycle packaging and products and repurposes the material into affordable, innovative products. So this brings us to our challenge: