Background Paper: Egypt's Circular Economy: Challenges and Opportunities in Textiles, Plastics and Cement

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Introduction

The circular economy model, based on the principles of regenerative growth, minimizing waste and pollution and product and material reuse, has been recognized as a significant opportunity to curb Egypt’s environmental degradation and support Egypt’s industrial base. Egypt is listed as one of the largest ‘Grow Countries’, which are characterized by rapid industrialization, increasing material consumption and the expansion of the middle class, and would thus benefit by prioritizing resource efficiency, renewable energy and material recycling, according to the 2021 Circularity Gap Report (Circle Economy, 2021).

The cement, plastics and packaging and textile manufacturing sectors are among the industries that have a significant environmental footprint. Egypt’s cement sector is a high energy-consuming and polluting sector, it accounts for 17.17% of industrial energy consumption (Ministry of Electricity and Renewable Energy [MoERE], 2018a) and 51% of GHG emissions from Egypt’s industrial processes and product use (IPPU) sector in 2015 (EEAA, 2018). The textiles and apparel sector is highly water-intensive; the usage of chemicals such as bleaches and dyes requires large amounts of water estimated to be at a rate of 200 l/ kg of product (EEAA, 2003) and the sector contributes the heaviest organic load of industrial wastewater, at almost 52% (Malato et al., 2011). Egypt is the biggest plastic polluter of the Mediterranean, with 250,000 tons of plastic from Egypt leaking into the sea a year, and in the Arab world, producing 5.4 million tons of plastic waste a year (World Wildlife Fund, 2019; Noureldin, 2020). Plastics account for 13% of Egypt’s waste composition (SWEEP-NET, 2014). Current recycling rates for plastics are low, at around 11% of total plastic waste (Mahmoud et al., 2020). Therefore, these sectors have been singled out for their unique and considerable environmental impacts and their alignment to the global circularity focus on industrial sectors. 

Despite the institutional commitment in Egypt to sustainable and inclusive growth in various national strategies, including Vision 2030 and the Industrial Trade and Development Strategy 2016-2020, existing resource efficiency initiatives appear to be largely donor-reliant and discontinuous. While many of these initiatives focus on building the technical capabilities of enterprises in respective sectors, they are insufficient to tackle the institutional barriers to circular economy practices, including the weak enforcement of environmental legislation, inadequacy of existing strategies and regulations to embed circular economy concepts, and financial instruments, as well as an absence of coordination and overlapping responsibilities between the multiple governmental entities involved in cross-cutting measures such as wastewater treatment, solid waste management, and energy efficiency. Circularity policies therefore need to be in place to strengthen the respective institutional frameworks of these cross-cutting measures to support circular economy practices, as well as to target sector-specific challenges preventing the expansion of circular economy practices, such as in the cement, plastics and textiles manufacturing sectors. This paper aims to provide background on the environmental impacts and green opportunities in the cement, plastics and packaging and textiles manufacturing sectors, as well as an overview of current and historical policies, strategies and initiatives aimed at fostering inclusive, sustainable growth and encouraging resource efficiency practices in Egypt’s industry. It will then describe the main barriers to adopt circular economy practices as relating to said cross-cutting measures and sector-specific challenges. The final section of the paper will provide an overview of the policy areas that need to be amended based on a survey of the existing literature.