EGYPT – The Egyptian Minister of the Environment, Yasmine Fouad, has announced the expansion of the capacity of the Al-Khanasir solid waste recycling plant in the seaside town of Sharm el-Sheikh.
According to the Minister, the government wants to increase the capacity of the Al-Khanasir facility to 150 tonnes per day.
Currently, the facility has a capacity of 140 tonnes per day. The waste is sorted, compressed and recycled, including organic fertilizer for the organic waste.
This fertilizer is supplied to agricultural farms and hotels in the city of Sharm El-Sheikh, nestled between the Sinai Peninsula desert and the Red Sea.
Egyptian Environment Minister Yasmine Fouad says plastic waste is also sorted and compressed at the Al-Khanasir plant and recycled by a company in Cairo, Egypt’s capital.
A 45,000 m2 plot of land will be made available to the designated company to carry out the various works related to the expansion project of the Al-Khanasir recycling plant.
In addition to reducing environmental pollution, “the objective is to meet the agricultural development according to the strategic plan of the South Sinai governorate in the towns of Ras Sudr and El-Tor,” says the Egyptian Ministry of the Environment.
The project also includes the installation of a waste sorting line with a capacity of 250 tonnes per day in addition to the current 140-tonne line, in anticipation of an increase in waste production due to population growth in the city of Sharm el-Sheikh.
This comes at a time when of an estimated 2.8m tonnes of plastic waste leaked into the Mediterranean each year, Egypt is by far the largest source, accounting for 43% of the total, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
This leakage, as well as the large amounts of discarded plastic bottles, bags and other items littering Egypt’s city streets and tourist areas, is the result of a poorly functioning system of plastics management.
Meanwhile, in April, Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (EEAA) signed three financing agreements with three companies to build recycling facilities in Suez Canal Economic Zone.
The three companies involved SEMADCO, Flex P Films, and Huhtamaki Egypt received a combined €22 million (US$24.10m) for the construction of solid and liquid waste recycling facilities.
The EEAA will finance these companies under the third phase of the Egyptian Pollution Abatement Program (EPAP).
Environment Minister Yasmine Fouad said that the industrial pollution control program is one of the ministry’s projects that bolsters the industrial sector, providing financial and technical support for industrial projects, whether supporting environmental compatibility or implementing energy efficiency systems.
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