Zabbaleen
The Zabbaleen ( ', ) is a word which literally means "garbage people" in Egyptian Arabic. The contemporary use of the word in Egyptian Arabic is to mean "garbage collectors". In cultural contexts, the word refers to teenagers and adults who have served as Cairo's informal garbage collectors since approximately the 1940s. The Zabbaleen (singular: ', ) are also known as Zarraba (singular: Zarrab), which means "pig-pen operators." The word ' came from the Egyptian Arabic word ' (, ) which means "garbage".
Zabbaleen
There is a gender division of labor in the process of collecting and sorting the trash in the Zabbaleen system. Usually, it is the Zabbaleen men, sometimes accompanied by children, who go pick up the trash door-to-door from each household. This trash is completely unsorted because there is not a system of recycling at the source in Egypt. It is rare for girls to go to collect the trash and it stops almost entirely after girls reach the age 10. The means of transportation that the Zabbaleen use to transport the trash that they collect are donkey-pulled carts and pickup trucks. After the Zabbaleen pick up the trash, they take the trash back to their village, a trip that may take anywhere from between 10 minutes to an hour.