Cairo families begin to recycle waste by generating biogas from rubbish in ambitious project.
CAIRO - In an attempt to help curb the city's stifling pollution and meet their energy needs too, a few Cairo families have begun to recycle waste by generating biogas from rubbish.
It is an ambitious project that is still in its infancy but may just catch on in this teeming city of 18 million people, often obscured in a dirty gray veil of haze produced mainly by the fumes from millions of car exhausts.
The plan to transform organic waste into alternative energy was started by Thomas Culhane in east Cairo's Manshiet Nasser slums, which are known locally as Garbage City.
He runs Solar Cities, a non-governmental organization that looks to design and develop technologies that solve very local problems.
He has been installing solar panels to produce hot water for families in Garbage City.
This is where thousands of freelance trash collectors called zabaleen hand-sort through tons of rubbish collected from the streets of the megalopolis and then sell recyclable material.
The idea was well received and began to spread to the neighboring area of Darb al-Ahmar, prompting Culhane and Hanna Fathy, a Manshiet Nasser resident involved in the scheme, to offer families "biogas digesters."
Made from two simple plastic tanks and tubes, the digesters convert organic matter into biogas through a process in which bacteria decompose the matter to produce methane for cooking and fertilizer which can then be resold.
"One man's garbage is another man's gold mine. One woman's trash is another woman's treasure," Culhane said.
The alternative would be that "I would be throwing this garbage out in the streets, there would be rats, flies, cats and dogs."
The solar panels allow a family of 10 to save around 30 Egyptian pounds (5.4 dollars) a month, and biogas trims a further 10 pounds monthly.
This can mean valuable savings in Egypt, where the average household salary is around 100 dollars a month.
So far, however, Solar Cities has installed just 30 solar panels and seven biogas digesters.
The main hurdle is cost. Solar panels cost up to 2,400 Egyptian pounds and the digesters cost 700 Egyptian pounds, in a country where gas and fuel are heavily subsidized by the government.
Solar Cities has approached other local organizations, including the Association for the Protection of the Environment (APE) and the Association of Garbage Collectors, to try to promote their projects.
Culhane's group built biogas digesters for them to showcase the technology locally.
"We won't convince people if they don't see it for themselves," Fathy said.
Laila Iskandar Kamel is an environmental and social activist who runs the Community and Institutional Development group (CID), a consulting group that specializes in waste management.
She said the project is a "good idea," but also believes that "in addition to the organic waste, it should make use of the human waste because there is a serious problem of seepage in the neighbourhood."
CAIRO - In an attempt to help curb the city's stifling pollution and meet their energy needs too, a few Cairo families have begun to recycle waste by generating biogas from rubbish.
It is an ambitious project that is still in its infancy but may just catch on in this teeming city of 18 million people, often obscured in a dirty gray veil of haze produced mainly by the fumes from millions of car exhausts.
The plan to transform organic waste into alternative energy was started by Thomas Culhane in east Cairo's Manshiet Nasser slums, which are known locally as Garbage City.
He runs Solar Cities, a non-governmental organization that looks to design and develop technologies that solve very local problems.
He has been installing solar panels to produce hot water for families in Garbage City.
This is where thousands of freelance trash collectors called zabaleen hand-sort through tons of rubbish collected from the streets of the megalopolis and then sell recyclable material.
The idea was well received and began to spread to the neighboring area of Darb al-Ahmar, prompting Culhane and Hanna Fathy, a Manshiet Nasser resident involved in the scheme, to offer families "biogas digesters."
Made from two simple plastic tanks and tubes, the digesters convert organic matter into biogas through a process in which bacteria decompose the matter to produce methane for cooking and fertilizer which can then be resold.
"One man's garbage is another man's gold mine. One woman's trash is another woman's treasure," Culhane said.
The alternative would be that "I would be throwing this garbage out in the streets, there would be rats, flies, cats and dogs."
The solar panels allow a family of 10 to save around 30 Egyptian pounds (5.4 dollars) a month, and biogas trims a further 10 pounds monthly.
This can mean valuable savings in Egypt, where the average household salary is around 100 dollars a month.
So far, however, Solar Cities has installed just 30 solar panels and seven biogas digesters.
The main hurdle is cost. Solar panels cost up to 2,400 Egyptian pounds and the digesters cost 700 Egyptian pounds, in a country where gas and fuel are heavily subsidized by the government.
Solar Cities has approached other local organizations, including the Association for the Protection of the Environment (APE) and the Association of Garbage Collectors, to try to promote their projects.
Culhane's group built biogas digesters for them to showcase the technology locally.
"We won't convince people if they don't see it for themselves," Fathy said.
Laila Iskandar Kamel is an environmental and social activist who runs the Community and Institutional Development group (CID), a consulting group that specializes in waste management.
She said the project is a "good idea," but also believes that "in addition to the organic waste, it should make use of the human waste because there is a serious problem of seepage in the neighbourhood."
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