Egyptian startup turns hundreds of thousands of plastic luggage into tiles ‘tougher than cement’

An Egyptian startup is aiming to show greater than 5 billion plastic luggage into tiles harder than cement because it tackles the dual issues of tonnes of waste coming into the Mediterranean Sea and excessive ranges of constructing sector emissions.

“So far, we have recycled more than 5 million plastic bags, but this is just the beginning,” TileGreen co-founder Khaled Raafat advised Reuters. “We aim that by 2025, we will have recycled more than 5 billion plastic bags.”

At the corporate’s manufacturing facility, on the outskirts of Cairo, staff carry massive barrels loaded with combined plastic waste to be melted down and compressed.

The ensuing tiles are offered to actual property builders and contracting corporations to be used in outside paving.

Egypt is among the worst polluters within the Mediterranean area with round 74,000 tonnes of plastic waste coming into the ocean per 12 months, in keeping with a 2020 report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, a non-profit organisation.

Plastic waste is usually discarded on the street or disposed of in casual dumps or burned.

The North African nation, which hosted the United Nations COP27 local weather summit final November, has in recent times banned the usage of single-use plastics in a number of provinces.

Environment Minister Yasmine Fouad advised Reuters at COP27 that the federal government was working with supermarkets to ban single-use plastics by mid-2023 and was aiming to ban them nationally by 2024.