The ministerial delegation visits Colon
As part of their visit to Germany, the Egyptian ministerial delegation composed of: Dr. Mohamed El-Asar, minister of military production; General Mahmoud Sharawy, minister of local development; Dr. Yasmeen Foua’d, minister of environment; and General Abdel Moneim El-Teras, Head of Arab Organization for Industrialization (AOI) have visited (Eco City), 50 Kilos away from Colon. Representatives of the Egyptian embassy in Germany and Tawfiq El-Khashin, head of national program for solid waste under the supervision of GIZ. Eco City Company is comprised of three public companies: AWG, AGR, and USB that are specialized in collecting waste from home, cleaning of streets, recycling, and producing electricity from waste. The three companies are owned by the government but operate as a private sector and the idea of their coalition came after 8 local districts faced a problem of waste accumulation and dirty streets as well as lack of financial resources but since the German law prohibit any local district to establish a private company, the 8 districts allied together and formed a public company composed of a chairman and board of trustees whose number depends on the population of each district. Eco City burns 400 thousand tons of waste each year and serves around 1.6 million citizens. The city has 440 employees, 100 cars and earns 90 million euros each year.
Eco City depends on the latest technology in producing energy from burning waste and has a strict system to deal with exhaustions in order to abide by the German laws. It also provides public buses and other transportation means by electricity produced out of waste in cooperation with Japan. And though the cost of establishing stations for producing energy and electricity out of waste reaches around 500 million euros, the company covers this cost byselling electricity and energy to houses and fees paid for collecting garbage and cleaning roads.
The ministerial delegation visit ended by a tour visit to AWG premises where it produces energy and electricity out of burning waste.
The ministerial delegation also held a meeting at Colon’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry with a group of companies working in the field of waste management, healthy waste dumps and solar energy. One of the companies showed its interest to cooperate with Egypt in designing and establishing healthy waste dumps, which will solve part of the current waste problem in Egypt.