Dr. Yasmine Fouad, Egyptian Minister of Environment, held a meeting with representatives of the Waterway Real Estate Development Company and some researchers at a German research center in construction to discuss opportunities for implementing the first center for recycling construction and demolition waste.
That center, as she explained, will be converting the waste into products that will be used in the construction field in cooperation with the private sector in Egypt as a pioneering experience that can be repeated and innovated.
In a statement, Fouad affirmed that Egypt is opening the way for investment in waste of all kinds in hopes of transforming the challenge and problem into an opportunity.
Those changes come in line with the state’s tendency during the recent period towards changing the language of dialogue on the environment in the implementation of the directives of His Excellency the President of the Republic so that we spend on the idea that the environment is an obstacle to investment and that environmental challenges can be promising investment opportunities, guided by the experience of converting rice straw burning from a challenge to an opportunity by encouraging farmers not to burn it by making use of it in the production of fodder and fertilizers.
Furthermore, the Minister referred to the role of issuing the first waste management law in Egypt in regulating the process of waste management and defining roles and responsibilities, and the role of the Waste Management Regulatory Agency of the Ministry of Environment in planning, organizing, and controlling the waste management system, involving the private sector, and coming up with several strategies to deal with waste of all kinds.
That includes the construction and demolition waste management strategy, which relies heavily on changing the mindset about this waste and how to benefit from it.
Fouad stated that the project to be implemented to recycle construction and demolition waste to produce products that support the construction process will be a model that provides the technology and mechanisms necessary to expand this type of project, to join the infrastructure that Egypt began implementing years ago to implement the waste management system, looking forward to the success of that experiment through the efforts of the Ministry of Environment to promote environmental and climate investment in Egypt and to be one of the projects that come to light through the first environmental and climate investment conference in Egypt, scheduled for next month.
She further pointed out the distinction of this experience in that it links governmental cooperation between Egypt and Germany on the one hand and research institutions and the private sector on the other, explaining that this partnership must achieve an important goal, which is raising awareness in the field of achieving sustainability in the construction sector and providing appropriate solutions to benefit from construction and demolition waste by introducing a new product from construction waste that attracts consumers and helps save on the use of cement, which reduces cost and pressure on the environment.
Finally, they agreed to hold a meeting with the Building and Housing Research Center to consider research on the recycling of construction and demolition waste, the mechanisms for implementing the project, the possibility of cooperation with the Research Center and New Technology at the Waste Management Regulatory Authority and coordination with various partners, and to present a draft contract for the construction and demolition waste recycling center project expected to be signed during the environmental and climate investment conference as a leading model.
