Waste not, want not is the government’s message when it comes to agricultural and animal waste, and there are efforts underway to increasingly use these types of waste to make biofuels, animal feed, fertilizers, and more. This approach doesn’t just make economic sense, but environmental sense too.

BY THE NUMBERS- Egypt generates an average of 40-45 mn tons of agricultural and animal waste each year, according to the Agriculture Ministry. However, industry sources tell us that the number exceeds 65 mn tons when food processing waste is included.

The amount of waste we produce is vast, but so too are the ways we can recycle it, with manure, sugarcane leaves, and rice straw being prime candidates to make fertilizers, waste from poultry farms, sugarcane bagasse, and corn cubs being used for biogas production, and corn stalks, rice bran, and bone meal used to make animal feed. Numerous other organic waste products are also reimagined as byproducts to be used to create cardboard, recycled paper, construction materials, and even wood substitutes like MDF.

The agriculture and environment ministries are on the case, following a presidential directive to put to use the mns of tons of agricultural and animal waste that are either discarded or burnt each year, according to an Agriculture Ministry statement. The importance of better utilizing these types of waste has long been on the government’s radar, having issued the National Strategy for Agricultural Residues in 2019, the Waste Management Law in 2020, in addition to more recent efforts to issue a feed-in tariff for waste-to-energy plants, and numerous awareness initiatives to counter the burning of agricultural waste

Using waste to make biofuels is already on the rise, with the amount of biofuel created last year rising 64% y-o-y to 1.5 mn tons, an official at the Environment Ministry told us. Much of this goes towards pollution- and energy-intensive industries like cement manufacturing in an effort to reduce harm to the environment.

The push to use agricultural waste for animal feed is also part of the country’s efforts to reduce its import bill. Only 35% of the country’s animal feed is produced locally, the US Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agriculture Service said in a 2023 report (pdf). With uncertainty around where the EGP will settle against the greenback, Egypt’s reliance on imported feed contributes to unpredictable and often high meat and poultry prices — which is an issue for consumers, and an even more serious issue for livestock and poultry farmers.

Private sector interest also shows signs of picking up, with private investment in agricultural waste recycling now exceeding EGP 6 bn, with more than 20 factories operating in the sector, a source in the Environment Ministry told EnterpriseAM. Foreign players have also recently entered the field, and overall investment is expected to quadruple over the next three years.

But, the sector needs a more integrated ecosystem to support new investments, a source from the Egyptian Company for Solid Waste Recycling told us. That includes building localized waste collection systems in each governorate near farming communities, making it easier and cheaper for companies to access raw materials. Financial support is also needed to buy waste and pay laborers for collection. Equipment is another barrier, as a single processing machine can cost up to EGP 15 mn.

Despite some progress, roughly two-thirds of animal and agricultural waste is not recycled, while only 31-35% — equivalent to around 14 mn tons a year — of the waste is put to use. This large amount of unrecycled waste products has a serious negative environmental impact and represents a sizable missed economic potential, National Research Center Professor of Agricultural Economics Yahia Metwally told EnterpriseAM.

Part of the problem may be the primary focus on compost and animal feed, which together account for the majority of all recycled animal and agricultural waste. With the focus on these two sectors, other alternative recycling routes may not get the attention they deserve from investors and businesses trying to create additional revenue streams, we were told.

And unrecycled waste doesn’t just mean no additional revenue streams, it can also lose you money — particularly in agriculture — with the burning of waste emitting toxic gases and depleting microbial activity, which in turn reduce or even destroy crop yields, Cairo University Agricultural Economics Professor Gamal Siam told EnterpriseAM. Improperly storing and dumping waste can also lead to serious problems, like the risk of disease and pests like rats, which can chew through wires and find their way into food stores.

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