Hi Tim, this is T.H. "Taha" Rassam Culhane, the American-Iraqi you met! I just got back to Germany from another training and capacity building session among the Zabaleen. National Public Radio came to do a story on "Egyptian youth and the Environment" of which we are a feature. The figure that the Zabaleen themselves use is that OF THE GARBAGE THEY COLLECT well over 80% is recycled. The multinationals recycle a mere 10% of what they collect (if that) and the rest goes into landfills in the desert. In our latest project we are using recycled plastic bag residuals (that litter all the streets of Cairo because they have a very low resale/recycle value) to manufacture the boxes for our solar hot water collectors. The bags (and they can be of any color, which is an advantage!) are collected and washed and shredded by the Zabaleen, then dried on their roofs. Then they are shipped to the Prima Plast factory in Madinat Badr where they are mixed with other post consumer plastic waste, melted and pressed in a 1500 ton press into plastic panels. We purchase these panels and make solar collector boxes, tables, wall separators and shelves from them. Apparently there are only around 4 factories in the world that do this, but if we could stimulate a greater demand for plastic panels the streets of Cairo (and other areas) would improve in a hurry! The Zabaleen say that 100% of garbage could be recycled (and they'd be willing to do it) if there was an end use that made the effort worth it. That leaves it up to us as consumers!
Glad to find you on the web Tim, and thanks for a great article Claire! Come and visit our Solar CITIES project sometime -- we have just begun building solar heaters using recycled plastic bottles and fluorescent light tubes!

tculhane@ucla.edu