The Zabbaleen ( , ) is a word which literally means "garbage people" in Egyptian Arabic.Assaad, Ragui. (1996) Formalizing the Informal? The Transformation of Cairo's Refuse Collection System. Journal of Planning Education & Research, vol. 16, p. 118. The contemporary use of the word in Egyptian Arabic is to mean "garbage collectors". In cultural contexts, the word refers to teenagers and adults who have served as Cairo's informal garbage collectors since approximately the 1940s. The Zabbaleen (singular: , ) are also known as Zarraba (singular: Zarrab), which means "pig-pen operators." The word came from the Egyptian Arabic word (, ) which means "garbage".
Spread out among seven different settlements scattered in the Greater Cairo Urban Region, the Zabbaleen population is between 50,000 and 70,000.Fahmi, Wael & Sutton, Keith. (2006) Cairo's Zabbaleen Garbage Recyclers: Multi-nationals’ Takeover and State Relocation Plans.Habitat International, vol. 30, p. 812. The largest settlement is Mokattam village, nicknamed "Garbage City," located at the foot of the Mokattam Plateau, next to Manshiyat Nasser.Assad, R., (1998), Upgrading the Mokattam Zabbaleen (Garbage Collectors) Settlement in Cairo: What Have We Learned? , Paper Presented at the Macarthur Consortium on International Peace and Cooperation Symposium on The Challenge of Urban Sustainability. The Zabbaleen community has a population of around 20,000 to 30,000, over 90 percent of which are poor Coptic Christians living in self-built homes, many in slum conditions.
For several generations, the Zabbaleen supported themselves by collecting trash door-to-door from the residents of Cairo for nearly no charge. The Zabbaleen recycle up to 80 percent of the waste that they collect via local Egyptian companies, whereas most Western garbage collecting companies only recycle 20 to 25 percent of the waste that they collect.Fahmi, Wael & Sutton, Keith. (2006) Cairo's Zabbaleen Garbage Recyclers: Multinationals’ Takeover and State Relocation Plans. Habitat International, vol. 30, p. 820.Fahmi, Wael Salah.(2005) The Impact of Privatization of Solid Waste Management on the Zabbaleen Garbage Collectors of Cairo.Environment & Urbanization, vol. 17, no.2, p. 158.
The Zabbaleen use donkey-pulled carts and pickup trucks to transport the garbage that they collect from the residents of Cairo. They then transport the garbage to their homes in Mokattam Village, where they sort the collected items, then either sell the sorted items to middlemen or create new materials from it themselves. The living situation for the Zabbaleen is poor; they live amongst the trash that they sort in their village, and with the pigs to which they feed their organic waste. Nevertheless, the Zabbaleen have formed a strong and tight-knit community.
However, their way of life has come under threat after the Cairo municipal authorities’ decision in 2003 to award annual contracts of $50 million to three multinational garbage disposal companies.Fahmi, Wael & Sutton, Keith. (2006) Cairo's Zabbaleen Garbage Recyclers: Multinationals’ Takeover and State Relocation Plans. Habitat International, vol, 30, p. 821. The government authorities do not compensate the Zabbaleen for these changes, and as a result, the takeover of waste collection threatens the socio-economic sustainability of the Zabbaleen community.
The Zabbaleen faced a major challenge when the Egyptian Agricultural Ministry ordered the culling of all pigs in April 2009 in response to national fears over the possible spread of H1N1 influenza.Fahmi, Wael & Sutton, Keith. (2010) Cairo's Contested Garbage: Sustainable Solid Waste Management and the Zabbaleen's Right to the City.Sustainability, vol. 2, p. 1773. This governmental decision posed a major setback to the Zabbaleen because pigs, who eat the organic waste, are an essential component to their recycling and sorting system. Immediately after the culling of pigs, observers noticed a visible increase in piles of trash and rotting food on the streets of Cairo. There are also worries that the Egyptian government is seeking to remove the Mokattam Village entirely and relocate the Zabbaleen further outside of Cairo by a further 25 km, to a 50-feddan (51.9-acre) plot in Cairo's eastern desert settlement of Katameya.Fahmi, Wael & Sutton, Keith. (2006) Cairo's Zabbaleen Garbage Recyclers: Multinationals’ Takeover and State Relocation Plans.Habitat International, vol. 30, p. 820.Fahmi, Wael & Sutton, Keith. (2010) Cairo's Contested Garbage: Sustainable Solid Waste Management and the Zabbaleen's Right to the City. Sustainability, vol. 2, pp. 1771 and 1774.
Historical background
First wave of migration Around the 1910s, a group of Muslim migrants from the Dakhla oasis in the Western desert of Egypt relocated to Cairo in an area known as Bab El Bahr, which is situated between Attaba and Ramses square in downtown Cairo.Fahmi, Wael Salah.(2005) The Impact of Privatization of Solid Waste Management on the Zabbaleen Garbage Collectors of Cairo. Environment & Urbanization, vol. 17, no. 2, p. 156.Fahmi, Wael & Sutton, Keith. (2010) Cairo's Contested Garbage: Sustainable Solid Waste Management and the Zabbaleen's Right to the City. Sustainability, vol. 2, p. 1769.Fahmi, Wael & Sutton, Keith. (2006) Cairo's Zabbaleen Garbage Recyclers: Multinationals’ Takeover and State Relocation Plans. Habitat International, vol. 30, p. 811. These people are known as the Wahiya (singular: wahi), which means people of the oasis. The Wahiya assumed the sole responsibility for the collection and disposal of Cairo's household waste under the framework of contracts with building owners in Cairo. In this system, the Wahiya paid the owners of buildings an initial sum and then collected monthly fees from the tenants for their services.Fahmi, Wael & Sutton, Keith. (2006) Cairo's Zabbaleen Garbage Recyclers: Multinationals’ Takeover and State Relocation Plans. Habitat International, vol. 30, p. 812.
Second wave of migration In the 1930s and 40s, there was a second wave of migration. This new group, mostly landless peasants, is known as the Zabbaleen. The descendants of subsistence farmers, the Zabbaleen originate from the El Badari district in Asyut, a rural region in Upper Egypt, which is the southern part of Egypt. As farming ceased to be a viable way of life, the Zabbaleen faced economic hardships which prompted them to migrate to Cairo in search of work. Henceforth, the Wahiya collaborated with the Zabbaleen, who purchased waste from the Wahiya for use as fodder for pig farming. Initially, the Zabbaleen settled in the Imbaba district of the Giza governorate, but were given a four-day eviction notice from the governor of Giza in 1970. Thereafter, the Zabbaleen settled mainly in an abandoned quarry at the foot of the Mokattam hills, east of Cairo, which is under the jurisdiction of the Cairo Governorate.Aziz, H., (2004), 'Improving the livelihood of child waste pickers: experiences with the ‘Zabbaleen’ in Cairo, Egypt' , Waste, p. 9. Although the governor of Cairo granted the Zabbaleen administrative permission to settle in the area, he did not issue a lease or legal tenure. Thus, because of their precarious situation, the Zabbaleen initially lived in makeshift settlements of tin huts, made mostly of barrels that the Zabbaleen found amongst the waste that they collected. This Zabbaleen community later emerged as the informal garbage collectors and recyclers of Cairo. The literal meaning of the word Zabbaleen is garbage-men (singular: Zabbal). The Zabbaleen are also known as Zarraba (singular: Zarrab), which means pig pen operators, because they raise pigs that eat the organic components of the waste that they collect.
1989 agreement between Wahiya and Zabbaleen Prior to the migration of the Zabbaleen, the Wahiya had used the refuse, after drying it, as a source of energy—specifically as fuel for public baths and bean cookeries. However, this use of dried refuse became obsolete in the 1930s when fuel oil became the preferred fuel for public baths and bean cookeries. This coincided with the migration of the Zabbaleen, who used the organic components of the wastes to feed their pigs. Thus, the Wahiya began to sell the organic refuse to the Zabbaleen. Because the Zabbaleen needed to obtain waste food before it rots, they preferred to collect the refuse themselves using their own donkey carts.
The Zabbaleen can be distinguished from the Wahiya in at least two ways. First, the Wahiya retained control over the access and collection rights to the monthly fees paid by the residents, whereas the Zabbaleen usually do not have a share in the monthly fees paid by residents. In fact, the Zabbaleen are often obliged to pay the Wahiya in order to gain access to the waste garbage. However, what the Zabbaleen do acquire are the rights to the refuse itself.Assaad, Ragui. (1996) Formalizing the Informal? The Transformation of Cairo's Refuse Collection System. Journal of Planning Education & Research, vol. 16, p. 119. Hence, the relationship between the Wahiya and the Zabbaleen was hierarchically constituted. The Wahiya acted as the middlemen between the Zabbaleen and Cairo's households. Quoting Assaad, "The wahiya assume overall responsibility for regular removal of the wastes vis-à-vis residents and building owners and are responsible for collection of the wastes from individual dwelling units to the street level. The Zabbaleen, on the other hand, are responsible for the haulage and disposal of the wastes."
Second, the Zabbaleen collect the garbage on donkey-pulled carts, separate out recyclables, breed pigs to recycle organic waste, and engage in the process of recycling, whereas the Wahiya do not. The Zabbaleen also sell the sorted secondary materials such as paper, tin, glass, plastic materials, rags, and aluminum cans to intermediaries.Fahmi, Wael Salah.(2005) The Impact of Privatization of Solid Waste Management on the Zabbaleen Garbage Collectors of Cairo.Environment & Urbanization, vol. 17, no.2, p. 157. Because Cairenes are generally not aware of the distinction between the Wahiya and the Zabbaleen (also called zarraba), they tend to refer to both groups as Zabbaleen. It should be noted, however, that these two groups are distinct, serving different functions in the informal economy of collecting Cairo's municipal solid waste (MSW).Assaad, Ragui. (1996) Formalizing the Informal? The Transformation of Cairo's Refuse Collection System.Journal of Planning Education & Research, vol. 16, p. 118.
In response to government pressures to upgrade and modernize the refuse collection system, the Wahiya and the Zabbaleen made an agreement which resulted in the establishment of the Environmental Protection Company, a private-for-profit company, in 1989. Within the framework of the EPC, the Wahiya contracted groups of Zabbaleen to collect and dispose of MSW. The Wahiya continued to collect user fees from tenants, but now they also assumed the responsibility to cover hauling costs out of the fees they collected.Assaad, Ragui. (1996) Formalizing the Informal? The Transformation of Cairo's Refuse Collection System. Journal of Planning Education & Research, vol. 16, p. 121. The formation of the EPC officially established the Wahiya and the Zabbaleen as key participants in the collection of MSW, formalizing a relationship that had already existed for decades.