Late at night
an unseen army scurries through Cairo’s streets
quietly collecting and then hauling away
over 5 million pounds of garbage.
They are the Zabaleen.
The word means “garbage people” in Egyptian Arabic.
They are all Coptic Christians,
and 60,000 of them live in Cairo
many in Mokattam - nicknamed Garbage City.
The Zabaleen are among the poorest people in Egypt.
Until recently,
Garbage City had no water, sewage, or electricity.
Despite this fact,
the Zabaleen have managed to create
one of the most efficient recycling systems in the world.
They re-use over 85% of the garbage they collect,
from over 12 million people.
Each family has its established route,
handed down through generations.
Because most of the Zabaleen’s
income comes from recycling,
they charge little or nothing to haul away the garbage.
In fact, they often pay the building owners for the right to collect trash from their tenants.
Once home, the women and girls do almost all the sorting.
It takes 10-12 hours a day,
even when everyone pitches in.
The Zabaleen tend to have big families,
since they need lots of extra hands.
Initially, the garbage gets separated into general categories:
paper, plastic, cardboard, and metal,
and then resorted into astonishingly specific piles.
You can tell a lot about a city from its garbage.
Since they don’t wear gloves,
tetanus is a constant threat.
and nearly half of the Zabaleen test positive for hepatitis.
Given their environment and poor hygiene,
they get sick a lot.
All organic waste is fed to pigs.
This is why the Coptic Christians have a monopoly on trash collection –
Egypt’s 80 million Muslims don’t eat pork.
Pigs are the Zabaleen’s main source of income.
A six month old piglet
destined for the tourist resorts
will earn the Zabaleen almost $100.
In April, 2009, disaster struck Egypt’s garbage collectors
when the first case of swine flu appeared in Mexico.
Even though no Egyptian ever caught the virus,
the government ordered every last pig in in the entire country to be slaughtered.
Without pigs, the recycling industry was unsustainable.
Garbage piled up on Cairo’s streets
with nobody to collect it.
The children of the Zabaleen suffered most,
since pork was their only affordable animal protein.
Families banded together to try raising other livestock,
without much success.
They are only now beginning to rebuild their herds.
Luckily, the Zabaleen have a few other ways to earn a living.
Some of the materials they collect
like plastic bottles
can be resold to factories as far away as China.
But first, they have to be compressed.
So they get handed over to a family
that specializes in crushing plastic.
It’s basically just a metal container
with some homemade modifications.
You want to watch your fingers around here.
They actually sort by brand.
This comes from the American pile.
The kids start helping out when they turn five or six years old.
By the time they’re eight,
they practically run the show.
There is one thing in the garbage that’sworth its weight in gold…
Second hand oil cans.
They get flattened and used to fix roofs and walls.
But the Zabaleen do far more than just sort garbage
they turn it into raw materials
ready for manufacturing.
You'll see that next time.
Hey did you hear the part about Cairo recycling 85% of its garbage?
Wow.
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