Electronic Waste in Egypt and Material Recovery Economics

In Egypt, enormous amount of e-waste is generated yearly, It was evaluated as 586 k tons in 2019 with an increasing rate of 5.71%, which double the increase in population. The generated e-waste per capita, is 5.84 kg/capita at increasing rate of 2.66%. The e-waste generated in Egypt is about 11% of globally e-waste generated, and about 20.1% that of the African continent. Egypt lacks serious national regulations and infrastructure to handle e-waste properly.An example of the economics of e-waste materials recovery and its feasibility in Egypt is proposed. A materials recovery facility (MRF) deals with the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) e-waste. Its input capacity is 2000 ton/year in the first year. The potential value of the e-waste processed in the facility is 109.15 million E£ (6.82 million $\mathrm{US}{\$}$). Precious metals potential value evaluates is more than 50% of e-waste potential). Gold is the highest potential value of 32.26%, while, Copper has contributes 18% of the potential value. Due to metals recovery efficiency, the expected maximum revenue is estimated to be 81% of the potential value. In spite of the fact that the precious metals is only 0.072% by weight of recovered metals, they contribute 58%. of the revenue. The study shows that the revenue achieved is more than 85.514 million E£ (5.345 million $\mathrm{US}{\$}$), while the total costs spent is almost 42.11 million E£. The facility achieves a profit of more than 50% of the total revenue.