It seems that the idea of recycling is becoming more and more common among Egyptians. Recycling baskets started to appear in Egypt’s luxurious areas, such as El Gouna. They were also spotted in Cairo’s luxurious districts, such as Zamalek and the Shooting Club.
However, the idea of recycling started to spread among other less luxurious areas, such as the Gezira Youth Centre.
A movement of great importance in this regard is “Zebala” (garbage) Stores.
Zebala Stores is a group of stores affiliated to the Adam Foundation for Human Development.
By establishing these stores, the foundation aims at making people aware about the importance of garbage, its recycling, and its re-usage in other useful aspects.
Zebala Stores buys garbage from houses, factories, and clubs, including empty bottles of carbonated water and mineral water, used fried oil, exhausted and used car tyres, paper, and all kinds of cartons. The price of every category of these is determined by its exchange market.
The initiative aims to provide financial resources to educate unprivileged children and the bedouins’ children in Egypt, as the foundation believes in the importance of developing the nation and making it a better place.
On 21 January 2017, to push this initiative along practical steps, Zebala Stores made an event under the title “We Will Collect What You Saved”.
Afterwards, they sold this material to factories for recycling, and the money collected was used to build schools that aim at teaching bedouins’ children how to become craftspeople.
This event was followed by another one under the name of “Zebala Festival 2”, which took place on 10 March in the Sea Scout Club in Giza.
The festival started by an opening ceremony for the kiosk dedicated to buy the trash. This ceremony was then followed by several activities, including a fashion show of recycled rubbish, workshop for recycling, small exposition for small “friendly environment” industries, and launching an awareness campaign about how to protect the environment in sign language.
It is shown that Zebala Stores’ movement is gaining popularity, as on the first event’s page it was marked that two persons would assist and six were interested. Their second event’s Facebook page marked the assistance of 131 persons, and 488 were interested.
A day after, on 11 March, another event took place under the name of “We Will Buy Your Rubbish and Separate it, Do Not Throw It”.
Photos courtesy of Zebala Stores
