 Through this contract, the Egyptian government agreed to pay $446 million to Onyx for the treatment of one million tons of waste per year for 15 years, a sum that was ten times greater than what the government had previously paid before for its municipal waste management.Significantly, the foreign companies, despite the large value of their contracts, are only required to recycle 20 percent of the waste that they collect; the remaining 80 percent are placed into landfills.In contrast, the Zabbaleen recycle up to 80 percent of all the MSW that they collect.