


Jeff Wolfanger
Dec 3, 2021
Egypt
Categories:
Sustainability
On September 15, 2021, Egyptian Minister of Environment, Yasmine Fouad, announced that Egypt will be the first Arab country to adopt sustainability standards. Fifteen (15) percent of the state’s investment plan projects for 2021 have already been approved as green projects. The State expects that number to increase to 30 percent next year and eventually to 50 percent within three years. At the height of the coronavirus pandemic, Egypt took its decision to go green with its budget, according to Fouad.
Having spent a school year teaching English in Heliopolis, an ancient Greek city and now a leafy suburb of Cairo, I was pleased but not surprised when I encountered this article. Cairo was quite polluted when I lived there and it remains so today. One online report recently ranked Cairo as the third (3rd) most polluted city in the world trailing Delhi, India, and Guangzhou, China. The World Health Organization Global Ambient Air Quality database reports that Cairo's levels of air pollution are almost ten (10) times greater than what is considered safe. Its climate, strong reliance on fossil fuels, and its large population (approximately 21 million people) are factors that contribute to its pollution problem.
Egypt is one of the oldest countries in the world with a history that goes back thousands of years, and it is considered to be one of the cradles of civilization. Egyptians know how to endure and survive. Egypt is also vulnerable to climate change and geopolitical conflicts, mostly over water from the Nile River, its principal lifeline. Moving to green, sustainable investment in public projects is practical and will help the country to become more resilient. It is an investment in their future, a move to sustainability at a macro level.
When I lived in Cairo it seemed that most families had a long-standing tradition of collecting and repurposing discarded materials to great effect. Egyptians were reusing, recycling, and repurposing long before the terms became popular in western cultures. For example, old clothing and rags might be woven into beautiful rugs and used tires may become shoes and sandals. This practice is a good example of sustainability at a micro level, the individual, the family. Both macro and micro level approaches will be needed if we are to thrive in the future world.
Is your community investing in sustainable, green public projects (your hometown, the macro level)? Most communities have a budget process that is open for citizen input. Learn, ask, influence change.
An intriguing micro-level opportunity is adapting the reuse, recycle, repurpose approach to your community. Here is an imaginative possibility: Clothing donation centers receive more clothes than they can resell. Clothes could be recycled into rags, rugs, packing material, furniture and automobile seat fillings, filters, compost, pet beds, carpet padding, and insulation to name just a few ideas. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, the United States generated over 16 million tons of textile waste in 2014. Not all clothing can be recycled but there is enough waste out there to create a large supply. Terracyle (https://www.terracycle.com) is a social enterprise operating in 21 countries that have developed creative ways to recycle many different throw-away items. Their belief is #RecycleEverything. They demonstrate that it is possible to recycle so many different things we usually throw away.
Are there opportunities being missed in your community, such as working with your local college or university to help create a business start-up to recycle some of your local waste streams and using the research and development capacity of the college/university to augment the recycling methods? Or perhaps it works best with high school students. Think of the recognition this could bring your community and the potential for outside investment.
The world is changing rapidly around us and this provides unprecedented opportunities for those communities to thrive who can get 'out of the box' and see possibilities where other communities do not. Is this an opportunity for your hometown?
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