Environment min. proposes hike in garbage collection fees

CAIRO – 5 August 2018: Minister of Environment Yasmine Fouad announced Sunday that the ministry prepared a proposal to consider a new hike in the value of the monthly bill paid by citizens for garbage collection.

On the sidelines of her participation in the annual meetings of the African Caucus for the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, Fouad said that the garbage collection bill paid for each house will range from LE 4 to LE 24 ($0.22 to $1.34), according to media reports.

A citizen told Egypt Today that she had paid LE 3 for garbage collection last month, which means that setting LE 4 as a minimum cost will represent an actual increase in the monthly bill.

During the meeting, Fouad revealed that the collection and transfer of garbage costs the state $3 for each person, while it costs some other states up to $7.

In February, former Environment Minister Khaled Fahmi announced that the minimum value for garbage collection bills will be LE2 ($0.11). The minimum value at the time was reportedly only LE1 (0.056).

The minister said that the value of the bill will be determined according to the nature and size of the housing unit, in addition to the area where it is located.

Fahmi said that solid waste management in Egypt costs the state LE 7 billion ($392,058) annually. He added that the state aims to direct 20 percent of the collected garbage to energy, and 60 percent to biological treatment of organic fertilizers.

Few days before the minister’s statements, a number of parliamentarians objected to Fahmi’s decision to impose new fees for garbage collection, noting that it will badly affect poor citizens. They demanded that the new fees be imposed on the rich only.

In late April, Fahmi said that 85 percent of citizens will not pay more than LE 10 as a maximum value for the garbage collection bill.

He added that a new value increase would be mainly endured by people living in fancy housing units, including villas and compounds with higher consumption of electricity.

Fahmi said that the collection of 20 million tons of garbage underscores the importance of recycling, adding that the collection process needs to be improved for this reason.


A worker picks through rubbish in garbage dump at a small recycling factory near Zaraeeb in the shanty area known also as Zabaleen or “Garbage City” on the Mokattam Hills in eastern Cairo, Egypt – Reuters
In October, the Cabinet allocated LE 300 million ($17 million) for the new waste collection system for purchasing necessary gear and paying the wages of the additional labor, Cairo Governor Atef Abdel Hamid said.

The new model aims to collect garbage door to door, and cancel garbage bins from streets to prevent garbage collectors from sorting waste in the streets, which was the old model of dealing with waste.

Waste-to-energy plants

Shehata al-Moqadis, head of the Garbage Collectors union, inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with an Italian company to build a waste recycling plant.

“The new project aims at running a waste-to-energy plant with a capacity of 600-1100 tons per day that can be used to generate electricity or to produce gas,” Moqadis said in press remarks on Saturday.

He further called on the government to support the budding project by sponsoring the purchase of the produced electricity so that it can be applied into different sectors, which will ensure the sustainability of the project.

The project presents plenty of opportunities for the government and municipalities to get rid of solid food leftovers, he added. “Large amounts of electricity will expectedly be extracted akin to the same amount that is generated from the high dam in Aswan.”
Egypt has a festering waste management problem, with more than 80 million tons of garbage being disposed every year, according Fahmi.

Turning landfills to recycling plants

Landfills that have increased in size over years in Egypt are subject to plans that would see them turned into recycling centers.

In April, Fahmi said that Menoufia’s Abu Kharita, the biggest landfill in Egypt, will be replaced by the largest recycling plant in three months.

“The University of Alexandria will implement a plan for the disposal of the landfill, and we will provide experts to work on waste sorting,” Fahmy said.

“There is no society free from garbage, but we aim to solve the problem of waste within four years. Once a new law [on garbage disposal] is passed by the House of Representatives, a company will be selected to run the processes of disposal,” he added.

“Sell your garbage,” a project launched by Cairo Governorate in early 2017, aims to establish kiosks in different neighborhoods where people are encouraged to sell their used cans, plastic bottles, paper and cardboard instead of throwing them away. It began with two kiosks in the Heliopolis district in Cairo, and other kiosks are being prepared in other locations in the governorate.

Additional reporting by Dunya Hassanin