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
Many observers noticed an immediate increase in piles of trash on the streets of Cairo after the pig cull. Because in the Zabbaleen system of recycling, it is the pigs who initially eat the organic waste, the pig cull had a negative effect on the cleanliness of Cairo's streets. According to Khalil in an article by Al Masry Al Youm, "The elimination of the pigs prompted more trash than usual to immediately start clogging the streets of the capital." In a New York Times article from September 2009, Slackman states that the Egyptian government was warned before its actual execution that the pig cull, if executed, "the city would be overwhelmed with trash." Slackman notes that after the pig cull, "rotting food piles up on the streets of middle-class neighborhoods like Heliopolis and in the poor streets of communities like Imbaba." In an article by Bloomberg, Williams also observes a garbage crisis piling up on the streets of Cairo after the pig cull. This piling up of organic MSW became hazardous because the organic waste then became a source of infectious diseases and led to an increase of rat infestation.