In the UK, rafts of plastic bags and bottles washing up on our beaches present a major environmental challenge.
In Cairo, they’re a business opportunity.
Britain can learn a lot about waste management from the garbage collectors who scour Cairo’s slums for any material that can be re-used, recycled or made marketable.
And Dr Laila Iskander, who founded an organisation to champion the industry and ingenuity of these enterprising Egyptians, has a simple mantra: “There is no such thing as waste.”
Invited to Perth to address ‘More than Waste,’ a conference organised by the Community Recycling Network for Scotland (CRNS) recently, Dr Iskander shared her experience to help inspire community recyclers in Britain.
A single anecdote drawn from her 26 years with some of the poorest families in Cairo is a perfect illustration of the gulf in attitude between the wasteful West and the more resourceful developing world.
She recalled: “Years ago, I took a group of boys from the recycling school on a day trip to the beach.
“They had never seen the sea before but, rather than be amazed by the ocean, they were shocked by the amount of garbage on the beach and in the water.
“They couldn’t understand why people in the area were just throwing it away. They wanted to take it home and recycle it. For them it was wasted money.
“None of them could swim but they still wanted to go out into the water to fish out the plastic bags floating around!”
Dr Iskandar’s aversion to waste has its roots in her early education at a British missionary college in the Egyptian capital, where her Scots teachers instilled the Protestant work ethic, frugality and solidarity.
After completing her own education in America, she returned as a volunteer teacher to the Cairo college and had her first encounter with the city’s freelance rubbish recyclers.
“I taught children from these poor communities, six-year-old boys would go out with their fathers at 3 am with donkey carts to salvage rubbish which was then brought home and sorted by the women of the family.”
Today, the children of many of these families are educated at Recycling Schools, founded by the Community and Institutional Development Group (CID) which Dr Iskandar set with the help of four friends and backing from UNESCO.
“These children are now ambassadors for the work the garbage collectors carry out within the city.
“They are running small businesses, not scavenging or stealing garbage.
“They have pride in what they do. It generates income, requires technical know-how and responds to market forces, just like any recycling organisation in the UK.”
Dr Iskandar helped forge friendlier relations with multinational cosmetic companies concerned that their empty bottles were being collected and refilled with bootleg liquids to be resold with the labels intact.
CID put two and two together, and the result is a programme in which garbage collectors recycle the empty containers in return for educational funding from the companies keen to protect their brands.
“Big business is happy, the plastic goes eco-friendly and the garbage collectors get a chance for educational mobility.
“I see the developing world being affected by richer nations in two ways.
“One, unintentionally, through lifestyle models which say we have a right to material excesses.
“The other is a more planned approach and equally damaging: that of governments in developing countries adopting Western governance and business models without questioning what is best for their own environments and people.”
So, after decades of fighting the garbage collectors’ corner, what keeps Dr Iskandra motivated and inspiring others?
“I get my energy from them” she explains.
“I’m happy knowing I have touched the lives of these families, especially the women and children who now have the opportunities for education and a livelihood.
“I have met many wonderful people through CRNS and there are lots of social enterprises in this country making a difference to local communities and diverting waste from landfill.
“I would just ask that people reconsider what they term as waste.
“We are all used to the debate on global warming, but all cultures need to learn from each other’s efforts to reduce consumption, reuse and recycle.
Editorial@greenwire.org.uk
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