Factories That Once Ignored Recyclers Are Now Calling Daily, Paying Cash Upfront As Demand Triples And Recycled Plastic Prices Surge 60% In Manshiyet Nasser
According to Arab News, the US-Iran war and the resulting closure of the Strait of Hormuz have produced an unexpected winner: Cairo’s Garbage City, where hundreds of informal recyclers in the Manshiyet Nasser settlement are experiencing a demand surge that has tripled orders and pushed recycled plastic prices up by as much as 60 per cent.
“Before the war, we were the ones calling factories, trying to sell our material,” said Peter Romany, a 25-year-old recycled polyethylene specialist. “After the war broke out, the factories started calling us. They’d ask: How much do you have? Can you deliver today? That never used to happen.”
The cause is straightforward. Egypt imports around 40 per cent of its raw plastic materials, predominantly from Gulf countries. According to Independent Commodity Intelligence Services, the Middle East supplies around 85 per cent of global polyethylene, and approximately 85 per cent of its exports pass through the Strait. With the waterway closed, packaging and plastic prices more than doubled for some products, pushing manufacturers toward locally recycled alternatives.
Sadat City Chemical Fiber Factory, which produces polyester fibre from used plastic bottles, said it cracked new export markets as far as Brazil. Uflex Egypt reported demand for recycled packaging rising up to 40 per cent. Factories that once delayed payments began paying cash upfront.
Home to more than 115,000 residents who handle over a third of Cairo’s waste, Manshiyet Nasser is now a strategic industrial hub; even if its workers live above mountains of rubbish separated from their workshops by little more than a staircase.
War drives geopolitical prices. But this time, it also found an informal economy of garbage collectors in east Cairo who had quietly built one of the world’s most sophisticated recycling systems — and nobody outside Egypt was watching closely enough to notice until the raw materials stopped arriving.
Check out our previous coverage of geopolitics on The Trusted Times.
