Al Ahram Beverages Company announced its partnership with “DORNA” to achieve the company’s sustainability target of recycling 25% of its plastic PET production by the end of 2022, by working with informal waste recyclers in targeted areas. This partnership comes under the auspices of the Ministry of Environment.
Al Ahram Beverages Company is investing EGP 5m for the current year to achieve this target, and will accordingly increase investments each year to achieve recycling 100% of its PET production by the end of 2025.
Al Ahram Beverages and DORNA in their first steps towards real recycling that integrates with the informal recycling workers in Egypt towards a Green future – free from plastic PET wastes which threaten our environment and our lives. What goes around, comes around.
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Al Ahram Beverages Company (ABC) is the oldest operating beverages company in Egypt, and one of the leading companies in sustainability in the country under its global strategy “Brewing A Better World”.
In 2021, ABC initiated and signed the ‘Plastic Pact’ with the Ministry of Environment to confirm its sustainability and responsibility commitments towards the environment and society and invested EGP 5m in “DORNA” to support the recycling system and the whole informal value chain to reach 25% of its plastic PET by end of 2022. The current year is the first step in the Al Ahram Beverages Company and “DORNA” partnership to slope up until reaching 100% in 2025, then continuing the company’s first financial investment towards its plastic neutrality in Egypt.
“DORNA” is a reverse credit system designed by CID Consulting that serves as the first socially inclusive model for Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) in Egypt. It is a scalable and sustainable industry-wide solution for plastic neutrality that engages with informal waste recyclers to increase their current recycling and recovery rates of PET plastic whilst simultaneously improving their livelihood on more than one front.
DORNA achieves this by providing monthly financial incentives to actors along the informal PET value chain based on the quantities collected. Once quantities are collected and all transactions between value chain actors have been documented, verified and approved, DORNA disburses the incentives to e-wallets set up for all informal waste recyclers onboarded on the system.
Al Ahram Beverages Managing Director, Nikolay Mladenov says, “Any market leader should also act as a responsible business role model. In line with our global strategy and local priorities, we must direct all our attention to saving our environment and setting measures to mitigate future damage; one of the major challenges we all face is plastic waste. Partnering with DORNA is an important milestone for Ahram Beverages on the right path to solving the PET problem in Egypt. In addition to the environmental impact, DORNA also enables Ahram Beverages to enhance the lives of more than 600 recycling workers in the 15th of May area whose homes were completely demolished during the flash floods of March 2020.”
Co-Founder of CID Consulting, Laila Iskandar, emphasized that “Al Ahram Beverages’ partnership with DORNA is a strong demonstration of the company’s commitment to EPR, a policy that was explicitly referred to in Law No. 202 by the Ministry of Environment, as well as driving collective climate action and a circular economy by engaging in partnerships between private, public, and informal sectors to reduce plastic waste in Egypt. In compliance with EPR, DORNA’s reverse credit system is designed for concrete tracking, and verifiable and credible documentation, and it covers the waste management costs for its partners’ packaging. This allows more plastic materials to be recycled in a scalable way whilst simultaneously benefitting communities, businesses, and the government. On the environmental front, it benefits cities by reducing plastic litter in our streets and saves our waterways from plastic leaking into rivers, canals, seas and oceans.”
Planning is the dream, but the execution is transforming this dream into reality achieving measurable results. The ABC and “DORNA” partnership is a real example of the Plastic Waste Management and recycling solution, as this system is a model to be applied across Egypt’s governorate and with the participation of private companies coming together to achieve EPR and support the government in achieving goals and targets of its national sustainability strategies.
Last but not least, Al Ahram Beverages Company and “DORNA” are actively getting ready for participation in COP27, ensuring continuous presence in all sustainable eco-friendly activations and activities. ABC will be present in COP27 through its integrated Sustainability Agenda with spotlight on DORNA as well as other areas of focus such as sustainable agriculture, water balancing, local sourcing, community support and women empowerment.
