Egyptian startup TileGreen recycles plastic waste into eco-friendly interlocking tiles

EGYPT – TileGreen, an Egyptian start-up in the construction industry is making eco-friendly interlocking tiles from plastic waste that could otherwise end up in the Mediterranean Sea.

The start-up is aiming to turn more than 5 billion plastic bags into tiles tougher than cement as it tackles the twin problems of tonnes of waste entering the Mediterranean Sea and high levels of building sector emissions.

Khaled Raafat, TileGreen co-founder said: “So far, we have recycled more than 5 million plastic bags, but this is just the beginning. We aim that by 2025, we will have recycled more than 5 billion plastic bags.”

“Currently, we have plans to expand in Egypt, and we have plans to expand in some Arab countries. We started working on this with our partners, real estate developers and contracting companies who tried our product and liked it very much and want to spread its usage.”

The resulting tiles are sold to real estate developers and contracting companies for use in outdoor paving.

Egypt is one of the worst polluters in the Mediterranean region with around 74,000 tonnes of plastic waste entering the sea per year, according to a 2020 report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, a non-profit organization.

The report outlines that primary microplastics – plastics that enter the oceans in the form of small particles, as opposed to larger plastic waste that degrades in the water – the plastic flow into the Mediterranean is estimated at 13,000 tonnes/year.

Tyre dust is the largest source of leakage (53%), followed by textiles (33%), microbeads in cosmetics (12%), and production pellets (2%).

Based on a projected annual increase in global plastic production of 4%, the report lays out different leakage scenarios and assesses key actions that could contribute to cutting plastic flows into the Mediterranean over the next 20 years.

It finds that under a business-as-usual scenario, annual leakage will reach 500,000 tonnes per year by 2040 and underlines that ambitious interventions beyond current commitments will be required to reduce the flow of plastic into the sea.

The North African country, which hosted the United Nations COP27 climate summit last November, has in recent years banned the use of single-use plastics in several provinces.

Environment Minister Yasmine Fouad at COP27 reiterated that the government was working with supermarkets to ban single-use plastics by mid-2023 and was aiming to ban them nationally by 2024.

These plus other efforts and collaboration between the government and the private sector would greatly help in the fight against plastic pollution in the future.

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