However, their way of life has come under threat after the Cairo municipal authorities’ decision in 2003 to award annual contracts of $50 million to three multinational garbage disposal companies.

[11] The Zabbaleen faced a major challenge when the Egyptian Agricultural Ministry ordered the culling of all pigs in April 2009 in response to national fears over the possible spread of H1N1 influenza.

[12][13] This governmental decision posed a major setback to the Zabbaleen because pigs, who eat the organic waste, are an essential component to their recycling and sorting system.

[17][18][19] As farming ceased to be a viable way of life, the Zabbaleen faced economic hardships which prompted them to migrate to Cairo in search of work.

[2] Prior to the migration of the Zabbaleen, the Wahiya had used the refuse, after drying it, as a source of energy--specifically as fuel for public baths and bean cookeries.

[26] The formation of the EPC officially established the Wahiya and the Zabbaleen as key participants in the collection of MSW, formalizing a relationship that had already existed for decades.

[17] The municipal authorities grew increasingly intolerant of the Zabbaleen's donkey carts, which, according to Assaad, were considered an eyesore and a traffic hazard by the government.

Regardless, in the early 1990s, the garbage collectors had to comply with the municipality's requirements to use motorized trucks, rather than donkey carts, as the authorities introduced a system of mechanization to transport solid waste.

[20] In the absence of government support, the Zabbaleen had to find ways to purchase the newly required motorized trucks themselves, and many resorted to credit loans, emptying their personal savings, or even selling small plots of land in their ancestral villages.

The air was heavily polluted by the smoke generated from fires that were either lit deliberately to dispose of unwanted waste, or resulted from the spontaneous combustion of organic residues.

[4] During the beginning decades of the Mokattam settlement, the community suffered from "high mortality and morbidity rates (especially among children), poor environmental conditions, and low income.

[4] In 1976, a large fire broke out in Manshiyat Nasir, which led to the beginning of the construction of the first church below the Mokattam mountain on a site of 1,000 square meters.

It is named after the Coptic saint, Simon the Tanner, who lived at the end of the 10th century, when Egypt was ruled by the Muslim Fatimid Caliph Al-Muizz Lideenillah.

[7] The Zabbaleen are able to recycle up to 80 percent of the waste that they collect through their family-run micro-enterprises that generate jobs, including those for production of handmade crafts from rags and paper, and incomes for some 40,000 people.

"[40] By investing in such infrastructure, the Zabbaleen continually upgraded and enhanced their methods of recycling plastic, paper, cardboard, glass, metal, and fabrics.

[22] Thus, as Engi Wassef, the director of Marina of the Zabbaleen notes, "One of the reasons why Coptic Christians are given a kind of monopoly status on the garbage collection and sorting system is because the Muslim religion does not allow for breeding or eating or living near pigs.

According to Fahmi and Sutton, "Hitherto, the Zabbaleen claimed to collect 6,000 tons of MSW a day, of which 60% was food waste and organic garbage which their pigs consume.

[44] The efficiency and environmental friendliness of the Zabbaleen "waste collection and recycling system received major world recognition and approval at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992.

[46] There was a precedent for this approach to trash collection two years earlier, in 2001, when the government agreed to sign a contract with Onyx, a French company, to manage the waste of Alexandria, the second largest city in Egypt.

[9] Two years after the new system was imposed, Rashed writes in the Al-Ahram Weekly, "residents of the governorate have been voicing increasingly vociferous complaints that the companies are working well below full capacity.

"[49] The subcontracting of MSW collection to foreign companies had an immediate negative impact upon the Zabbaleen community as documented in Mai Iskander's film, Garbage Dreams.

In the documentary Garbage Dreams, Laila, a social worker in Mokattam Village, says, "The city contracted with foreign waste disposal companies because they perceived the Zabbaleen to be old-fashioned.

However, because the mechanized equipment of the foreign companies are too large for the streets of Cairo, citizens were required to bring their trash to designated collection centers and bins, which were not always placed in easily accessible locations.

[52] Although government authorities stated that the slaughtering itself was humane, and in accordance with Islamic law, witnesses testify a lot of cruelty and violence in the culling.

According to Slackman, "Piglets were documented being stabbed and tossed into piles, large pigs beaten with metal rods, their carcasses dumped in the sand.

[53] Later, the Egyptian government openly stated that the pig cull was no longer just an act to prevent swine flu; rather, it was part of a plan to clean up the Zabbaleen and allow them to live in sanitary conditions.

"[12] In contrast to the explanations officially given by the Egyptian government, many other observers, especially in the Western media, as well as the Zabbaleen themselves perceived a religious bias in the execution of the pig cull.

"[12] In another New York Times article, Audi writes, "Most of Egypt's pig farmers are Christians, and some accuse the government of using swine flu fears to punish them economically.

"[12] In an article by the BBC, Fraser argues along a similar line, saying that the Coptic Christian minority were targeted by the government for a main source of their income, the rearing of pigs.

Fahmi and Sutton echo a similar explanation: "The adverse effect of the slaughtering of the pigs on the Zabbaleen's livelihoods might be part of the ongoing gentrification of garbage city for land speculations and the taking over of their recycling economy by entrepreneurial businesses.