Global Design Platform UNI Launches Waste Management Initiative in Egypt
The competition is offering grants totalling up to $20,000 for a sustainable design of a facility that would allow garbage collectors to resell and barter recycled products.
Waste management. The elephant in every city’s room, aching to be fixed. Cities across the world generate roughly 1.3 billion tonnes of solid waste per year, and that figure’s expected to rise almost an extra billion by 2025.
The acceleration is quicker in Cairo, where NGO and government-backed initiatives have strived to establish sustainable waste management systems to protect both urban and rural districts from being laden with waste. Much of the garbage collected from Cairo is later dumped in Manshiyat Naser, an area known as ‘Zabbaleen,’ for the garbage collectors that have been informally dealing with the city’s waste since the 1930s.
And while there still remains to be an efficient system put in place, design platform UNI has just launched The Tinker Project, inviting designers and architects to design a waste management recycle facility that can provide for the reselling and bartering of the recycled and tinkered products. UNI is offering grants up to a total of $20,000, with a jury consisting of experts in architecture and sustainability.
The project also aims to raise awareness of the discrimination and neglect that garbage collectors experience. Though they are the ones ensuring the city is kept clean, most endure unsanitary living conditions in their own neighbourhood.
Head here to find out more.
