In Cairo’s ‘Garbage City,’ One Coptic Community Is Telling a Sustainability Success Story

20.08.2024 - 20:52 / cntraveler.com

In a part of Cairo known as the Garbage City, Magada Bamy’s hands move so swiftly that they nearly blur as she sifts through a bag of trash. “Grade A, grade B,” she mutters to herself, placing the plastic into piles based on thickness. Bamy, a middle-aged woman with a stern face framed by a bright-orange headscarf, sits on her doorstep as she half watches her grandchildren playing amongst the towers of trash filling the street. The youngest pulls a pair of swimming goggles out of a pile and puts them on, making the other children giggle.

Bamy is a resident of the Cairo neighborhood of Mansheyat Nasir, the home of a Coptic Christian community who have handled the city’s garbage for generations. Despite discrimination and poverty, the Zabbaleen—meaning “the garbage people,” in Egyptian Arabic—have developed one of the world’s most efficient recycling systems, as measured by the percentage of waste recycled. They sort everything by hand and use simple machinery to prepare raw materials for reuse: Upcycled products like jewelry, rugs, quilts, and stationery made in this neighborhood are shipped internationally, and some locals run tours to show visitors their working methods.

“The men collect trash from around the city and bring it back for the women to sort and recycle,” Bamy tells me as she points down a garbage-filled alley in Mansheyat Nasir. High buildings of raw brick and stacks of waste loom over us on either side, giving the feeling of being stuck in a maze. On the narrow street, many women just like Bamy are sorting through sacks while sitting cross-legged on the pavement.

Once the bags’ contents are sorted, some materials will be reused locally, Bamy explains. Oil canisters become tin roofs; organic waste is fed to pigs. Others are shipped further afield. Are any of your clothes made of synthetic fibers? If so, there’s a chance that they come from Mansheyat Nasir; the plastic Bamy collects is sent to a recycling workshop a few blocks away, fed into a machine, broken into pellets, and sent to textile factories in China.

The Monastery of Saint Simon, also known as the Cave Church, sits in the district of Mokattam Hills where the Zabbaleen—literally “garbage people”—have developed one of the most efficient waste reduction systems in the world

Bamy gestures to a door behind her and points out that the first floor is a workshop, and the Zabbaleen live on the upper floors of their houses. This explains the low whirring sound of machinery that pervades the street. “There are different machines for different materials. We mainly handle plastics on this street, but elsewhere, people take care of metal, glass, and everything else,” she explains. As we walk through the neighborhood, I peer past open doors