Over 30,000 people live in an abandoned quarry in the Muqattam Mountain area
who toil as zabaleen -- garbage collectors. For more than five decades, city
residents have relied on the zabaleen's economical door-to-door service, hauling
away trash by small truck or donkey cart.
The zabaleen spend hours sorting glass, plastic, cardboard, paper, tin and torn
clothes in their communities and sell it to local factories that wash, compress
and resell the materials. The zabaleen collect about one-third of Cairo's trash --
4,500 tons a day -- and recycle 85 percent of the trash they collect.
"They have created what is arguably one of the world's most efficient resource-recovery
and waste-recycling systems," Wael Salah Fahmi, professor of architecture and urban
design at Helwan University in Cairo, wrote in a 2005 study.
Father Sama'an over 10 years ago established a ministry to help the zabaleen.
In March 2007, Triamer provided a donation to help Father Sama'an's work with
the zabaleen and their families.
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