Egyptian startup TileGreen is turning plastic into tiles

Egyptian startup TileGreen will turn bns of plastic bags into interlocking outdoor paving tiles, Reuters reports. The company has recycled upward of 5 mn plastic bags at their factory in 10th of Ramadan City and aims to recycle more than 5 bn by 2025, co-founder Khaled Raafat tells the newswire.

How does it work? Plastic waste is shredded, turned into a thick sludge, and combined with other materials, then undergoes thermal treatment and high-pressure compression to produce tiles that the company claims are twice as strong as concrete. TileGreen uses different kinds of plastics and products — repurposing around 125 plastic bags per tile — which would otherwise be difficult to separate and recycle. The company has produced some 40k tiles since it began selling outdoor tiles last year.

Egypt has a plastic pollution problem: Egypt is MENA’s biggest marine-plastic waste polluter and the biggest polluter of the Mediterranean Sea, a 2022 World Bank report (pdf) found. The country’s marine plastic waste — which includes macroplastics and microplastics — is expected to double from 2010 to 2025. Egypt’s per capita plastic waste generation is among the lowest in the region, indicating that poor waste management and cheap production of single-use plastics are responsible for excessive plastic waste.