- New recycling machines in Dokki that give phone credit for bottles and cans sparked backlash because local "zabaleen" rubbish collectors felt excluded and threatened by the tech.
- The zabaleen—mostly from Cairo's Coptic minority—collect about half the city's waste and reportedly recycle some 80% of what they gather, a surprising efficiency for small-scale informal networks.
- Start-up ZeroPrime plans 20,000 machines by 2030, and officials have agreed to a compromise letting zabaleen empty the machines, highlighting the tension between modernization and integrating existing workers.
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