Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Belatedly, Egypt Spots Flaws in Wiping Out Pigs
CAIRO -- It is unlikely anyone has ever come to this city and commented on how clean the streets are. But this litter-strewn metropolis is now wrestling with a garbage problem so severe it has managed to incite its weary residents and command the attention of the president.
"The problem is clear in the streets," said Haitham Kamal, a spokesman for the Ministry of State for Environmental Affairs. "There is a strict and intensive effort now from the state to address this issue."
But the crisis should not have come as a surprise.
When the government killed all the pigs in Egypt this spring -- in what public health experts said was a misguided attempt to combat swine flu -- it was warned the city would be overwhelmed with trash.
The pigs used to eat tons of organic waste. Now the pigs are gone and the rotting food piles up on the streets of middle-class neighborhoods like Heliopolis and in the poor streets of communities like Imbaba...
...For more than half a century, those collectors were the zabaleen, a community of Egyptian Christians who live on the cliffs on the eastern edge of the city. They collected the trash, sold the recyclables and fed the organic waste to their pigs -- which they then slaughtered and ate.
Killing all the pigs, all at once, "was the stupidest thing they ever did," Ms. Kamel said, adding, "This is just one more example of poorly informed decision makers."...
Two lessons (at least) here. One is the gross but predictable inefficiency of top-down decision making and the horrible results on a society. They say that Mussolini made the trains run on time, but as was pointed out to me by a very smart person (where have you gone, The World?), this was never more than a marketing slogan. Fascism is never efficient, and doesn't make the trains or anything else run on time. The best mitigator of unforeseen consequences is a government that facilitates the millions of decisions of the people acting closest to consequences of the decision, not one that makes decisions for the good of those very same people from a cloudy height.
The second is the buried story (buried under rooftop stacks of garbage) of the Christians of Egypt, the Copts, the "zabaleen." If you need a reminder, I highly recommend you watch the video of their situation way back here. Remember that next time you hear an Egyptian official complain about living conditions in Gaza.
[h/t: Sara]
Yes, the AXIS powers made the trains run on time to keep the ovens functioning at full capacity.
A documentary, “Marina of the Zabbaleen”, was just released in select theaters and on DVD.
The film is about a 7-year-old girl (Marina) who lives at the base of a mountain in Cairo, Egypt. Her village (Muqqattam) is a community of Zabbaleen -- or Zabaleen ;) -- whose entrepreneurial waste management system produces the highest recycling rate in the world.
It premiered at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival, won a Muhr Award at the 2008 Dubai International Film Festival, and was reviewed by The New York Times –- http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/movies/09marina.html.
It’s also the first feature film to use a new eco-friendly DVD technology (the “Flex DVD”), which uses 50% less plastic than traditional DVDs, reduces the carbon footprint by 50%, and eliminates the need for a non-biodegradable bonder. Also, the rest of the packaging is made from 95% recycled materials. ALSO, the marketing campaign for the film has been completely paperless.
There’s some more info about the film and the Flex DVD at http://marina.torchfilms.com.
Oh, and the company that’s releasing “Marina” (Torch Films) is giving 10% of gross revenues to help the Zabbaleen recover from their dislocation (caused by the pig cull).