CAIRO: In the labyrinthine alleyways of Cairo’s Garbage City, recycling specialist Peter Romany finds himself fielding calls from factories scrambling for plastic to plug supply shortfalls caused by the Iran war.
The 25-year-old is among the hundreds of recyclers and manufacturers across Egypt benefiting from a war-driven surge in demand since the US and Iran choked off the Strait of Hormuz — a major shipping lane for the raw materials used to make plastic.
At the heart of the boom is the sprawling eastern Cairo settlement of Manshiyet Nasser, where generations of garbage collectors have built one of the world’s most sophisticated informal recycling systems.
Home to more than 115,000 residents, the Manshiyet Nasser settlement handles more than a third of the capital’s waste, according to government figures.
“Before the war, we were the ones calling factories, trying to sell our material,” Romany said, standing beside towering bales of compressed plastic.
