CEDARE Showcases SRI Impact on Egypt at the WRF’23
On 5 September 2023, and as part of the WRF’23 in Geneva, Ms. Ghada Moghny, Senior Programme Coordinator at CEDARE delivered a presentation on the “Sustainable Recycling Industries Impact on Egypt”, as part of the scientific session titled “E-waste frameworks, business models and management”. Ms. Moghny overviewed the Egyptian e-waste management scene and the dramatic positive changes rapidly taking place day after day.
Since 2009, Egypt has been determinedly working on enhancing its policies and regulations on e-waste management as a strong drive to circular economy and economic growth. The Egyptian government was keen to optimize its resource efficiency, increase green job opportunities and pave the way for a flourishing circular economy setting. Joining forces with the Swiss Sustainable Recycling Industries Programme (SRI), Egypt managed to develop a new system for e-waste recycling. In 2011, SRI in collaboration with the Egyptian government developed an e-waste needs assessment for Egypt to set the foundation for officially launching the SRI Project in 2015. Ms. Moghny further emphasized how SRI helped in identifying the need to establish policies & regulations and developed the legal guidelines for this sector, which led a few years later to defining e-waste for the first time in the new Egyptian law.
SRI’s technical guidelines set an integrated sound management system of e-waste throughout its life cycle, from collection to recycling. The technical assistance provided by SRI experts helped recyclers to develop & improve their operations resulting in increasing the number of Egyptian e-waste recyclers from 2 to 19. These guidelines similarly allowed for incubating creative entrepreneurs & supporting them to establish their SMEs. This was reflected in designing the standards for certifying formal recyclers and integrating the informal recyclers into the formal system. The knowledge transfer, capacity building and awareness programmes comprehensively addressed entrepreneurs, recyclers, auditors, governmental officials and private sector actors. Additionally, SRI established an auditing system for recyclers, and conducted training of trainers including government officials from involved ministries. A full technical & managerial curriculum was developed, which will be taught to technical vocational schools to enhance education in the industry.
CEDARE’s presentation on SRI milestones in Egypt, in this edition of WRF in Geneva, Switzerland, 2-8 September 2023, showcased how this fruitful partnership succeeded in addressing the major economic, environmental & health challenges. SRI is implemented in Egypt by the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (MCIT), Ministry of Environment, and CEDARE’s Sustainable Growth Programme (SGP), and from the Swiss side: the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), World Resources Forum, DSS, Empa (Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology) and the Embassy of Switzerland in Egypt.
