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EGYPT / LANDFILL
STORY: EGYPT / LANDFILL
TRT: 1.58
SOURCE: WORLD BANK
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: JUNE 2009, EGYPT
FILE – JUNE 2009, ECARU WASTE TREATMENT FACILITY, SOUTH OF CAIRO
1. Various shots, truck dumping garbage
2. Wide shot, loading conveyor belt
3. Close up, sorting garbage on belt with magnet
4. Wide shot, hauling to windrows
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Fayez Mekhail, engineer, ECARU:
“Garbage is a treasure, if the men try to get benefit from it, so it’s very important for us in Egypt to get use from garbage and benefits from compost.”
FILE – JUNE 2009, ECARU WASTE TREATMENT FACILITY, SOUTH OF CAIRO
6. Wide shot, men sorting trash
7. Wide shot, loading truck
8. Wide shot, truck passes ECARU road sign
FILE – JUNE 2009, ONYX WASTE TREATMENT FACILITY, ALEXANDRIA
9. Various shots, worker measuring methane production
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Jean-Pierre Hansen, Managing Director, Onyx Alexandria:
“We must respect the environment, this is our target. We extract the leachates, the liquid produced by the organic matter in the landfill, and also the biogas.”
FILE – JUNE 2009, HAMID EL SHIATY FARM
11. Various shots, worker composting
12. SOUNDBITE (English) Jannie Leroux, Manager, Hamid el Shiaty Farm “We can see it in the growth, in the improvement of the quality, the improvement in the soil itself, it’s much better.”
FILE – JUNE 2009, CAIRO
13. Various shots, garbage collectors working
Tons of trash from Cairo, Africa’s biggest metropolis is dumped at this facility south of the city every day.
It is the end of the line and the start of a new one. Workers sort the garbage, taking out glass, paper, and plastics. A magnet sucks metal off the belt: these will be recycled and sold.
Kitchen scraps and plants are piled into windrows and turned into compost that is sold to farmers. Cairo is aiming to treat 90 percent of its waste this way.
SOUNDBITE (English) Fayez Mekhail, engineer, ECARU:
“Garbage is a treasure, if the men try to get benefit from it, so it’s very important for us in Egypt to get use from garbage and benefits from compost.”
But garbage disposal also can cause pollution, releasing gases such as methane that add to global warming. Work is underway in Egypt to put less in landfills by reusing more trash and by the capture and combustion of methane from the waste that is sent to landfills.
With the World Bank as broker, this solid waste facility will be the first in Egypt to sell carbon credits to industrialized nations for recycling and composting. If they were just to put all of the garbage that is being reused into a landfill, it would release the equivalent of just over 500,000 tons of emissions over seven years.
The facility also makes money from its organic compost, which doesn’t contain the insects manure can, or chemicals other fertilizers do.
The waste management company herein Alexandria is selling carbon credits—also through the World Bank-- for the methane gas it is capturing from its landfills, instead of allowing it to escape.
SOUNDBITE (English) Jean-Pierre Hansen, Managing Director, Onyx Alexandria:
“We must respect the environment, this is our target. We extract the leachates, the liquid produced by the organic matter in the landfill, and also the biogas.”
Egypt’s soil is poor, and the compost that workers distribute at this large fruit and vegetable farm is good for produce and the dirt it grows in.
SOUNDBITE (English) Jannie Leroux, Manager Hamid el Shiaty Farm “We can see it in the growth, in the improvement of the quality, the improvement in the soil itself, it’s much better.”
And as Egypt’s waste management companies work to reduce pollution in the environment, Egyptians attitudes are slowly changing. Millions of people generating mountains of trash, much of it thrown on the street, have growing awareness that trash doesn’t disappear, but affects our climate, and ultimately, everyone.
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