A waste recycling plant will be set up in Qalyubiya, a governorate in northeastern Egypt to generate electricity. The governorate of Qalyubiya will set up a waste incineration plant with energy recovery since Egypt is a country that produces huge amounts of solid waste that can be reused or recycled, so the waste that cannot be recycled is processed to decrease its volume and toxicity, and for energy generation.
“Egypt has a golden opportunity to capitalize on creating energy from waste, which would be aligned with the new energy strategy of the Egyptian government in which it targets to diversify its energy mix portfolio by adding energy recovery channels to the existing renewable energy projects,” expert in waste management and alternative fuels, Omar M. El Hassanein, told Egypt Oil & Gas.
Alaa Abdel Halim, governor of the northeastern region of Egypt, made the announcement. Without revealing the name, he says that a company has already been chosen to build the incinerator, which should absorb 40,000 tons of waste per day.
The incineration plant comes at the right time in a governorate where landfills and waste are multiplying as the population grows. According to the governor, discussions are also underway with the company responsible to design a smartphone application that should allow better waste management.
Ideally, once installed on a smartphone, the platform should make it possible to report the presence of a pile of garbage in the city by sending photos and some details about the neighbourhood. The teams responsible for cleaning up the city will have to do the rest. Such an application is already being tested in the major city of Cairo. It is called “Dawar” and should be integrated into a broader municipal waste management system. The only difference with Qalyubiya is that the governor wants the user to be able to send a photo back to show that the street has been cleaned for clarification.
The waste-to-energy industry is a good way for managing Egyptian waste. Investing more in the industry will help Egypt achieve its energy mix plans, and reach a future built on sustainable means of generating energy. While the Egyptian government is taking steps to attract investments in the waste-to-energy field, there remain several important financial and legal aspects to be tackled.