Garbage City
One of the most fascinating places I’ve been thus far is Manshiyat Nasser (Garbage City), a suburb of Cairo. Garbage City is home to more than 20,000 people (60,000 by some sources?), the Zabaleen (Arabic for “Garbage Collectors”). Daily, they gather about one-third of Cairo’s trash using carts and donkeys and bring it back to Manshiyat Nasser where the trash is systematically sorted and somewhere between 80-90% (!!!!!!) of it is recycled into raw materials or manufactured goods before being resold or reused worldwide. Despite the piles, stench and animals, Garbage City is very organized and one of the world’s most innovative and efficient waste disposal models. There are many areas of specialization, from sorting plastics to making paper and beautiful quilts.
Photograph by Bas Princen, 2009.
Photograph by me, 2006.
Unfortunately, Garbage City has had to overcome two major obstacles in the past few years. The Egyptian government attempted to privatize the waste management system with multinational waste management corporations - trading the practically free services of the Zabaleen for a $50 million a year trash collection plan (with a 20% recycling rate). Fortunately for the Zabaleen, the foreign companies’ trucks aren’t able to navigate the city’s narrow streets the way donkey carts can, so the Zabaleen continued to collect much of Cairo’s trash. In 2009, Egypt ordered the mandatory slaughter of all pigs in a misguided response to the H1N1 outbreak. Pigs have played an important role in Garbage City, eating food waste and being sold for meat to Coptic (Egyptian Christian) communities (under Islamic law, pork is forbidden). Since all the pigs were killed, the Zabaleen stopped collecting organic waste because it serves no purpose for them. “They killed the pigs, let them clean the city. Everything used to go to the pigs, now there are no pigs, so it goes to the administration.” said Moussa Rateb, a Garbage City resident, in this New York Times article.
I generally support the Zabaleen and Garbage City and see the situation as a marginalized community which has found a creative way to contribute to society and make a living. Are they intentionally “green” and working for the sake of the environment? Not necessarily. Is this an idyllic recycling community? Definitely not. There’s issues of education, health, sustainability, modernization and the young age of many Zabaleen.
Photograph by me, 2006.
It came to my attention recently that a documentary came out in 2009 called Garbage Dreams by Mai Iskander, followowing three teenage boys “born into the trash trade.” It’s received a lot of international press and will be broadcast nationally on Independent Lens in April. Here’s a clip:
