Making Cairo’s Garbage City Green

green | June 23rd, 2009 - 12:02 AM

Recycled Garbage Equals Two Daily Hours of Free Gas for Cooking

It’s a few miles from Cairo’s Great Pyramid of Gizathe only remaining Wonder of the Ancient World – but most people have never heard of it, most tourists never see it.  Americans help residents convert garbage into methane cooking gas.

The place is called Garbage City, and more than 20,000 people live there on trash recycling. The smell is atrocious. Flies swarm feverishly around the dirt, and kids play on the rubbish bags; it is, sadly, their natural environment.

Garbage City surely comes across as an unlikely place for a green-technology breakthrough. But U.S. philanthropist Thomas Culhane chose this very slum to experiment with cutting-edge green technologies.His charity, Solar Cities, set up solar-water panels and biogas systems that convert garbage into cooking gas.

“Families that have this,” Culhane said, “are disaster proof, economic-recession proof. They always have at least two hours of gas on their roof from their garbage.”

The inhabitants of Garbage City are by no means environmentalists or green militants.

The reality is that most of them are too busy with meeting their basic needs, to think about protecting the planet. According to Culhane, however, the residents of Garbage City are gladly embracing the technologies because they understand that it is in their own interest.

“This is not about saving the environment,” Culhane said. “This is about saving their environment, their children, their families. And they care so much about that that they are willing to invest everything they have, and take tremendous risks so that they can live a healthier life.”

This humble beginning has shown the people of Garbage City that even they can dream of a greener future.

Check out these websites for the full story.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=7823699&page=1

http://article.wn.com/view/2009/06/12/Making_Cairos_Garbage_City_Green/

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