Cairo, 25 May 2017: The final pitches under the E-Khorda incubation program for budding e-waste recyclers took place on the 25th May 2017 in Cairo. As part of the Swiss funded Sustainable Recycling Industries (SRI) program, 11 entrepreneurial teams participated in the program of which 6 pitched their business plans to win an investment into their company as well as a place on the next phase of the acceleration program to help them establish and grow their e-waste recycling business! Some of the business ideas pitched included an app-supported waste collection business, dismantling and component harvesting businesses and a recycle cafe converting waste to art.

The finalisation of the pitches was preceded by two days of intensive capacity building including sessions by international experts on recycling technologies and hands-on workshops on identifying and sorting e-waste plastics and business modelling. The training was also attended by existing e-waste recyclers, government officials as well as NGOs and representatives of informal waste recyclers. On the third day, a field visit to the informal plastic waste recycling hub of Cairo in Mansheyet Nasr was organised. This was the second of two technical trainings – the first 3-day training on best practices for e-waste recycling having taken place in April for over 80 participants, including the entrepreneurs of the he E-Khorda incubation program, existing e-waste recyclers, auditors and government officials.

The capacity building program for auditors, in conjunction with the Egyptian Ministry of Environment’s UNDP-GEF project on e-waste, also included a train-the-trainer program for auditors specifically, to share best-practice on audit and conformity assessment of e-waste recyclers. The 20 participants of this program were selected from the Central Department for Inspection and Environmental Conformity of the Ministry of Environment from greater Cairo, Suez, Alexandria, Mansoura, Sharqia, Beheira, and Red Sea governorates.

The SRI program for Egypt is funded by the Swiss State Secretariat of Economic Affairs (SECO) and is jointly implemented by the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa), the World Resources Forum (WRF), Sofies SA and the Centre for Environment and Development for the Arab Region and Europe (CEDARE).