When Mina Nedi graduated with a nursing degree last year, his friends and family expected him to start working in one of Egypt\u2019s overstretched hospitals. Instead, the 25-year-old decided to join his father\u2019s recycling business in Manshiyet Nasr, a neighbourhood on Cairo\u2019s eastern outskirts known as Garbage City.<\/p>\n
Every day, he sorts through thousands of plastic bottles, collected by a team of men who roam the city at night to pick up rubbish, separating them by colour and compressing them into large bundles with the help of a machine, ready to be sold for recycling and reuse.<\/p>\n
Mina Nedi, 25, has been working as a plastic collector for five years and funded his university education with it<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
What motivated Nedi was not family pressure, but a genuine determination to help the environment.<\/p>\n
\u201cClimate change, plastic pollution, microplastics. Awareness is growing among young people in Egypt,\u201d he says. \u201cCairo has a waste problem, and I know I can make a difference here.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo me, it\u2019s not garbage, it\u2019s income,\u201d says Nedi, \u201cand an opportunity to keep my city clean.\u201d<\/p>\n
Manshiyet Nasr, home to about 200,000 people, is known as Cairo\u2019s \u2018Garbage City\u2019<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Manshiyet Nasr is home to about 200,000 people, many of whom migrated from southern Egypt as early as the 1940s. As Cairo has been growing \u2013 it is now home to about 23 million people \u2013 so has Manshiyet Nasr. Today the community, often referred to as zabaleen<\/a>, meaning \u201cgarbage people\u201d, handles up to 80% of the city\u2019s waste<\/a>, as well as up to two-thirds of rubbish in the greater Cairo area.<\/p>\n Nedi recalls that when a priest in the predominantly Coptic Christian neighbourhood died a few years ago, the community paused work for several days to mourn, and Cairo was quickly \u201cdrowning\u201d in rubbish.<\/p>\n But despite playing a vital role<\/a> in keeping Cairo clean, Manshiyet Nasr has long been stigmatised. Most Cairo residents avoid the area, put off by the overwhelming stench of rubbish piled in homes, on rooftops and along the streets, full of rats and cockroaches scavenging for food.<\/p>\n Nedi is part of a new, young generation eager to break the stigma his community has been facing for decades. Slowly, it seems to be working.<\/p>\n Egypt generates up to 100m tonnes of solid waste<\/a> annually. And while the country has made refuse a political priority \u2013 setting up the Waste Management Regulatory Authority to oversee it \u2013 implementation is still difficult due to limited institutional capacity.<\/p>\n This, Nedi explains, is where Manshiyet Nasr steps in \u2013 and opinions of the area have started to shift.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile I was studying, I worked in recycling part-time to help pay my tuition,\u201d Nedi says, adding that his friends were curious and asked lots of questions. They wanted to learn more and started thinking about reducing their plastic consumption and environmental footprint. \u201cRecycling is becoming the cool thing to do here in Egypt,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n In Manshiyet Nasr, more young people are beginning to share that mindset; seeing recycling not just as a job, but as a way to drive change.<\/p>\n \u201cThe climate crisis is intensifying across the globe, including in Egypt, worsening water scarcity, heatwaves and food shortages,\u201d says Will Pearson, co-founder of Ocean Bottle<\/a>, a London-based startup that sells reusable bottles and funds the removal of plastic equivalent to 1,000 bottles in weight for each one sold, with Manshiyet Nasr among its partner communities.<\/p>\n \u201cGlobal plastic production emits greenhouse gases equivalent to the world\u2019s sixth-largest economy \u2013 it\u2019s in every way a growing and interconnected part of the problem,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n