by Marwa Yahya
CAIRO, March 15 (Xinhua) -- Ramy Abdullah, a young Egyptian living in a tiny bedroom cluttered with old television and computer, has prepared to bring these devices to recycling, which is promoted by the government via vouchers, trade-in discounts and other incentives.
"I used to get rid of e-waste by giving them to ragman for free," the young man told Xinhua, adding that now he switched the unused items for new products at a lower price via E-Tadweer, a cellphone app for recycling electronic devices.
Each year, Egyptians produce nearly 90,000 tons of e-waste, 23 percent of which come from the household sector, according to the statistics of Egypt's Ministry of Environment.
The ministry and the Federation of Egyptian Industries co-launched the app last year as part of the country's social media campaign "Safe Disposal of Electronic Waste," to encourage people to discard unwanted home electronics sustainably.
Since its launching in April 2021, users have accessed E-Tadweer more than 120,000 times, already exceeding the annual target, said Kareem Dabous, the app's developer, adding that 10,000 tons of electronic waste have been collected by far.
The project, for now, accepts routers, mobile phones, screens, cameras, printers, computers, and other items that are easy to be stored, said Tariq Al-Araby, director of the Medical and Electronic Waste Management Project at the Ministry of Environment.
In the near future, it will welcome household appliances, such as microwaves, air-conditioners and refrigerators when the environment ministry provides large storage spaces, Al-Araby said.
"Non-public sector often burns the e-waste, which releases mercury and copper elements and causes terrible heavy metal pollution," he said, noting that Egypt's private sector is the largest generator of e-waste, followed by families and government institutions.
The toxic pollutants in the atmosphere would "stay in the soil for long years and impact the food chain and cause diseases, especially cancer," he added.
According to Egyptian law, the waste produced by governments and companies must be handed over to the state-run factories for recycling, but those produced by households have long been directly handled by street ragpickers who would then recycle or dispose of them at will.
A study published in December 2021 by Egypt's Mansoura University estimates that in Egypt, about 20 percent of e-waste is locally recycled, while the rest goes straight to unregulated landfills.
Now by using the E-Tadweer, everyone across the country can upload a device image to see if merchants and electronic shops partnered with the project would recycle it and hand out vouchers or discounts in return, Al-Araby said.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Environment has supported the building of e-waste treatment factories that comply with high environmental and technological criteria, Al-Araby said, noting that there was only one such factory before 2018, while now the number stood at 12.
"Our target was to reach 100,000 users who trade products via the app in five years," said Dabous, the app's developer. ■