going APE in Garbage City

On Saturday a friend and I went to Mokattam, Cairo's famous 'Garbage City'. There, poor immigrants from Upper Egypt (most of them Coptic Christian) have carved out a niche for themselves sorting the city's waste, and living amidst the rubble. Although the flies and stench may not provide a pleasant welcome, once you move beyond the initial abrasiveness of the sights and smells you can quickly observe the dignity of these 'Zebaleen' (garbage sorters), and the 'order' within the piles that fill their streets.

Garbage City is famous, both within Egypt and internationally... though for very different reasons. Internationally it has been heralded as an innovative approach to recycling and recovering post-consumer waste: up to 80% of the garbage that the Mokattam collectors sort stays out of landfills or burn piles. Yet, policy-makers in Egypt argue that the Zebaleen only collect the 'best' waste, leaving the trash of poorer neighbourhoods to languish on the streets. Furthermore they are 'squatters' who haphazardly built on land they do not legally own, living in unsanitary conditions with contaminated water and rampant disease. They are seen as an embarrassment, which the government has threatened to dispose of one way or another. Towards this end, the government began contracting private waste removal services a few years ago, a strategy which caused considerable outrage in Mokattam (see this Christian Science Monitor article for more of a backgrounder).

(A typical Zebaleen cart loaded with trash... returning to Mokattam after a foraging trip in another part of the city.)

From an ethical perspective, part of the challenge is that this work, though lucrative, can be hazardous at worst and disgusting at best. Though this approach may be good at waste reduction and save the government billions of dollars (incognizant or ungrateful for this though they may be), should we support a system that has grown out of and perpetuates inequalities? True, it has evolved organically since the 1940s, but it seems to me that many of people who do this work were driven to it out of desperation and have limited opportunities for upward mobility. At the least, the living conditions in Mokattam call the compassionate to ask: How can we improve the health, safety, quality of life, and empowerment of those who work and live in this community?

That is exactly what folks at the Association for the Protection of the Environment (APE) have sought to do, through their collaborative programming with community members. Founded in 1984, APE seeks to "improve solid waste management practices in Egypt as well as transfer its technology to other parts of the world". Yet this is only half of their work, they also seek to improve community professional, educational and health standards through their learning programmes.

The APE Mokattam site provides all kinds of services to the community - day care and literacy programs for the most marginalized children (and the children of women workers at APE), health services (including Hepatitis C screening and treatment), and many work programs for women and girls.

Over 90% of their staff are female. We were able to see older girls (13 +) making rugs out of recycled cloth, as well as women making paper (above) and paper products, quilting, and embroidering. One of the things I found most fascinating is that APE offers formal apprenticeships in which new workers learn literacy and numeracy as well as their trade. In the rug-making section (below) it takes approximately three months to go through the programme, and girls are paid for this training. Once they have the skills, they are able to take out a (subsidized) loan to buy a loom so they can work from home.

Another very fascinating thing is that Ten Thousand Villages (a Mennonite-inspired fair trade organization with shops across North America) may be interested in carrying some of APE's products... Apparently someone was out visiting a few days ago to learn more about their products and processes.

APE also runs a recycling recovery program in another part of Garbage city, but apparently this is harder to get to and quite a distance from the Mokattam site. I'm hoping to visit it another weekend, but the Mokattam programmes were quite enough to see in one day. As you can tell from these glimpses, the site is beautiful. APE recovered an old landfill site, in the middle of the neighbourhood, transforming it into a garden with organic produce and pungent flowering trees.

It looks like some of the MEDA group will have the opportunity to visit APE during their upcoming tour... I think it will be an interesting visit!