Marruecos aspira a ser pionero en reciclaje de residuos en África

At the end of July, the Moroccan city of Essaouira becomes a pioneer in waste recycling in Africa, focusing on local awareness, social inclusion and territorial value creation. Initially, only plastics, cardboard, glass and frying fats will be recovered. Ultimately, textiles and stale bread can be incorporated into the process, along with other fermentable waste that can be converted into biomass.

The project was officially launched at the end of May, and is expected to enter the operational phase as early as the end of July. "The Mogagreen project will transform Essaouira into a pioneering city in Morocco and on the African continent," said King Mohamed VI's advisor and president-founder of the Essaouira-Mogador Association, André Azoulay.

This initiative aims to reduce the amount of recyclable waste in the city's landfills to zero by 2030. The project is being implemented by the Be Green association. It brings together several companies, including Inveko-Environnement and Zéro Zbel.

"Mogagreen is just the beginning, it is the scale 1 pilot. We believe that the waste management industry has not been exploited yet. Thanks to technology and digitalisation, [we] want to create an alternative model that can have a significant impact on the circular economy and the sustainability of cities," Youssef Chaqor, founder of Inveko-Environnement, told Middle East Eye.

Mogagreen is just the beginning, a pilot scheme with potential for expansion that seeks to establish Essaouira and Morocco as a sustainable powerhouse, in Africa and globally. At present, the traditional model of collection and burial in designated but overflowing landfill sites prevails. One of the many innovations introduced by the project is the digitalisation of the process.

The initiative is currently engaged in an awareness-raising campaign to gain support. They have a multi-channel approach and a major public awareness campaign. "The awareness and education campaigns represent 1.7 million dirhams ($190,000) out of an overall budget of 5.5 million dirhams," said Marouane Malek, project manager at Inveko-Environnement, making this a key phase of the project. 

As part of the Mogagreen project, at least 20,000 households, 300 businesses and 20 schools in Essaouira will be able to dispose of their waste at the click of a button. All they have to do is download an application, developed specifically to organise and facilitate waste collection, inform the collectors via WhatsApp or take their waste to the identified points themselves. This streamlines responsible waste management in a way that is convenient for the population.

One of the incentives to recycle offered by the app are rewards. Users can earn points based on the amount of waste sorted. These points can be exchanged for various rewards, e.g. mobile phone recharges. The project also foresees the creation of approximately 50 "green" jobs, as well as the collaboration of the "bouaara", waste collectors, as freelancers. 

In addition, at the end of the chain, companies and business clusters will be responsible for adding economic or energy value to the waste. "Our goal is to build an extensive ecosystem. Parties can participate as co-investors in the [secondary sorting] platform or by recovering materials," Chaqor said. In the first phase, only plastics, cardboard, glass and frying fats will be recovered. Subsequently, the spectrum will be expanded.

Some of the challenges facing Mogagreen in the short term include securing funding from major food industry brands and supporting a national strategy as ambitious as the project is. Morocco produces 6.9 million tonnes of waste annually. While the National Household Waste Management Plan is set to recycle 20% by 2022, last year it only achieved a figure of 7%. Plastics recycling amounted to 11%.

This initiative adds to the sustainability trend in the Alawi kingdom. Last year, Morocco launched its "Génération Green 2020-2030" plan, which is expected to increase the country's agricultural GDP and double the export of fruit and vegetables in the coming years, thus completing the Green Morocco Plan (launched in 2008). Another startup that exemplifies this change is Pikala Bike, based in Marrakech, which seeks to disseminate and de-stigmatise the bicycle as an "efficient, simple and chic" mode of transport.