On the drive across Cairo, the problem announces itself before anyone names it. Piles of rubble sit where sidewalks should be. Broken concrete hugs overpasses. Bricks, mortar, and dust line side roads like permanent fixtures. With the real estate boom happening, construction never really stops in Egypt — and neither does demolition.

“We have a big city, and our big city — fortunately — is considered a construction site all the time,” Adham El Mahdy, sustainability director at Lafarge Egypt and general manager of its waste arm Geocycle, tells EnterpriseAM, arguing that demolition never really stops either. The issue isn’t unique to Egypt, but it’s more pronounced here because construction is relentless — bridges, roads, compounds — and capital keeps flowing into real estate.

Construction and demolition “waste” — or, as the industry prefers to call it, “materials” — begins as raw input, yet instead of re-entering the construction cycle, it is often treated as a burden to be disposed of. “Tens of mns of [tons] of waste remain unmanaged and underutilized,” El Mahdy said. Compounding the problem is the lack of a clear national baseline: estimates of annual waste generation vary widely, and there is no recent, publicly available official data. That data gap complicates policymaking, weakens enforcement, and deters investment in a sector that relies on scale and predictability to function efficiently.

Reuse isn’t the problem — economics is. After sorting and crushing, pure concrete waste can partially replace aggregates in new ones, while mixed demolition waste can be reused as construction aggregates. Steel rebar is already recycled back into iron production. Other fractions can be used as raw material inputs in cement manufacturing. “The market today never rejects a material as long as it performs […] unless the economics don’t work,” El Mahdy tells us.

!_Subhead_! In today’s market, the cheapest option always prevails

High costs of transporting and processing these materials tilt the balance against recycling. “When logistics alone add a fixed cost per ton, recycled material can easily lose its price competitiveness versus virgin alternatives,” El Mahdy explains. “Once you account for collection, transport, and processing, recycled materials must compete in a market where virgin inputs are often structurally cheaper,” he adds. Moreover, Egypt’s construction market is not regulated like Europe’s, where mandates force the use of recycled, low-emission materials, which means sustainability alone doesn’t move purchasing decisions.

The fix is to make dumping expensive enough that recycling becomes competitive. “If waste continues to be treated as having negligible value, the system will never finance itself,” El Mahdy argues. Today, contractors can dispose of waste for as little as EGP 15-50 per ton, and, in some cases, recyclers even pay a token amount to take it off their hands. Raising disposal fees to around EGP 400 per ton would flip that logic, turning what is now lost to landfills or informal dumping into the gate fee that flows to recyclers — directly or via the state — helping cover processing and transport costs and making recycled materials commercially viable.

A missed window for the state? If properly priced and managed, El Mahdy estimates that construction and demolition waste represents a window for bns of EGP — capable of financing new recycling infrastructure, creating jobs, and supplying the market with cheaper alternatives. The wider economics reinforce the case: reduced reliance on quarries, less mining activity, lower fuel and equipment use, fewer permits, and slimmer transport bills. “All the matters indicate that the general interest is to reconsider the business model of this problem,” he said — framing it not as waste management, but as a missed industrial prospect.

The risk of ignoring it becomes alarming when looking next door: The war in Gaza has generated some 60-68 mn tons of rubble, mostly concrete, bricks, and metal from destroyed buildings. “It can’t be exported — it must be recycled in place,” El Mahdy noted. That reality, he argues, demands a clear financing framework — one backed by donors or public financing — because there are simply no alternatives.

!_Subhead_! What needs to be done

The solution starts with creating steady demand. The government could require a gradual increase in the share of recycled materials used in concrete, then extend similar rules to bricks, paving stones, and road projects. At the same time, disposal fees need to reflect the real cost of dumping. Higher fees would discourage landfill use and make recycling financially viable. With clear price signals and ensured demand, recycling facilities would have the confidence to invest and expand. A phased rollout — starting with reporting requirements and moving toward binding targets — would give companies time to adapt.

The bigger challenge is coordination. The construction sector operates in silos, even though costs and emissions are shaped across the entire chain. Design choices alone determine much of the building’s long-term footprint. Materials used during construction account for about 30% of emissions, while energy after completion accounts for the remaining 70%. Unless designers, regulators, developers, and suppliers work within the same framework, progress toward greener and more efficient buildings will remain slow and uneven.

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