Business planning for new ventures

Assignment 1
Ideation 1
By: Aya Gamal
Habiba El-Sayyad
Abdelraham El-Tahawy
Maher Fekry

This paper is exploring the garbage collectors and the garbage collection
process. At first, the idea of doing such a paper came out from realizing how
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important the garbage problem in Egypt is and there are many challenges for
this problem such as:

How big this problem is

The culture of the Egyptians
The lack of garbage carriers
Laziness and lack or incentives
No laws are implemented to solve this problem
Most of the people are not aware of how big this problem is
Lack of security
Lack of garbage cans
Cost of transportation of the recyclable wastes
And many other challenges but these were the most important
challenges.

There are many users in this big problem such as:

Citizens
Garbage collectors
Government
Garbage companies
Recycling companies
Dumping side users

Out of all these important users we chose the Garbage collectors to explore
them deeply, throughout this paper we will explores many important facts
about the garbage collectors.

The garbage collectors:

a. Key Facts & Data:
The process of garbage collection in Egypt:

Usually, it is done by the garbage men

Sometimes accompanied by children, who go pick up the trash door-todoor from each household
This trash is completely unsorted because there is not a system of
recycling at the source in Egypt
It is rare for girls to go to collect the trash and it stops almost entirely
after girls reach the age
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They use donkey-pulled carts and pickup trucks to transport the trash.
After the garbage collectors pick up the trash, they take the trash back
to their village
They in poverty with little access to health and education services.

Sorting:
After the garbage collection process is finished, the garbage collectors
returns to their village, and usually women out there are the ones who sort
out the trash, and usually only certain things are sorted out because these
things can be very useful such as: paper, plastic, aluminum, glass.
Facts & Data:

Women and children sort the garbage into 16 different types of trash
and sort out the recyclables.
The sorting of garbage is a time-consuming task in which women and
children may spend up to 10 to 12 hours each day separating the
garbage
The trash is sorted into the main 16 categories, such as paper, plastic,
cardboard, cans, glass, wood etc
For example; all different types of paper are placed into one pile while
all different types of plastic are placed in another pile
After the sorting of materials is finished, they sell the sorted materials,
such as paper, tin, rags, plastic materials, cloth

Question

Where do you
expect to find
answers

Research
outcome

Where answers
were found

Statistics:
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Cairo produces about 14,000 tons of solid waste daily according to statistics from the
Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency. More than 60 % percent of that is removed from residents
doorsteps early in the morning by the garbage collectors. 80% of the garbage is recycled.

Selling prices of sorted recyclable in Egypt:

White paper 400 L.E
Mixed plastic 1200 -1500 L.E
Polyethylene plastic injection 2000 2300 L.E

Newspaper 100 -150 L.E

Mixed cardboard 150 200 L.E
Polyethylene plastic (High and low density) 900

Copper 5000 5500 L.E

Tin cans 200 250 L.E
Glass 210 L.E
Bones 250 300 L.E

-1800 L.E
PET bottles 1500 3000 L.E
Aluminum 1200 8000 L.E
Iron 800 1000 L.E
Textiles 100 300 L.E

Things we observed while trying to deeply understand the problem:

While moving in the streets of Cairo we observed that people throw garbage in the street, out of
the car windows, and in front of their homes, and that this behavior is spread in different social

classes regardless of their level of education or social class

Also, we observed that the reason behind this behavior is the lack of laws and regulations to

prevent this habit

Another observation was that the government and citizens dont give the respect and the
appreciation to the garbage collectors

Connection with users:

We conducted interviews with garbage collectors and here are the questions that we asked:

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What is your monthly income from the garbage collection?

The average of the people we asked were taking from 5-10 L.E per apartment per month and the average
was collecting garbage from 10-15 apartments per month.

Are you satisfied with your Job?

No, because people dont respect how hard our job is and same goes for the government as we dont
have laws to protect it.

What do you need to be satisfied with your job?

We need laws to be implemented to protect our rights as human beings, we need people to be
aware with how important is our job in order to respect us and respect our hard job we also need
more advanced technologies to help us in the collection process.

How do you react with the people who throw garbage in the street?
I dont usually react, because Im sure that I cant say anything to him because at last ill be the
mistaken not him, as the culture dont respect our job.
How do u think people perceive your job?
I think that only few and rare people respect my job, and all the others dont even respect or see
the importance of the job and the impact of how bad to people treat us.
One of the garbage collectors that we interviwed raised a very important which was that people in
Egypt call the Zabaleen which is the name of the garbage however we are the ones who cleans
their garbage and the if were searching for the basic standards to show us that they respect us

and respect our job is that to stop calling us Zabal

Do you perceive your job as a service you do it for people or its just a source of income?
One of them said No one chooses to be a garbage collector, in such a country that doesnt
respect our rights, I just do it for a source of income as I cant find any other job. So I actually
didnt have the choice

Approaches to solve the problem:

Laws and Regulations would be the first approach to solve this problem
Advances technologies to help the garbage collectors instead of using the donkey pulled carts
Educational awareness for the citizens, to learn more about the import role that the garbage

collectors do for the society

Educational awareness of the problem of throwing the garbage in the street and how it destroys
the environment and the health

Resources:
http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/despite-new-regime-cairo-s-garbage-collectors-face-samehardships

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http://www.trioceanenergy.com/upload/PDF/SW%20Egypt%20.pdf

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