Plastic collected from Nile river makes 'pyramid'

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
LENGTH: 4:46
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Cairo – 17 September 2022
1. Various of volunteers in small boats being towed by motorboat to reach area that will be cleaned up
2. Various of volunteers collecting plastic bottles from Nile River
3. Al-Qursaya Island in Nile River
4. Volunteers in boat returning to al-Qursaya Island after collecting plastic bottles
5. Buildings on other side of al-Qursaya Island
6. Various of volunteers on riverbank collecting plastic waste  
7. Various of workers sorting plastic bottles and putting them into pressing machine
8. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Farah Abd El-Baki, marketing manager at VeryNile initiative:
“We did not want to do a cleaning campaign only on World Cleanup Day, we wanted you to see the amount of plastic that could be collected in a campaign where we do regular cleanups. This (she points behind her) was collected in 45 days only. Why was it (the collected plastic) arranged in the shape of a pyramid? Because we always think of a pyramid as being very large, and we wanted to show you how big the problem is.”
9. Various of boat in river
10. Various of workers and volunteers unloading pressed plastic waste
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Alban de Ménonville, co-founder and managing director of Very Nile initiative:
“What we are building here today is a plastic pyramid. We wanted to draw a link between the past and the present, to raise awareness about the amount of plastic we collect in the Nile.”
12. Workers and de Ménonville sorting pressed plastic
13. SOUNDBITE (English) Alban de Ménonville, co-founder and managing director of Very Nile initiative:
“We collected plastic bottles during only one month and a half, that’s a total of more than 200,000 plastic bottles that will be used to build this pyramid.”
14. Various of pyramid made from collected plastic
15. SOUNDBITE (English) Alban de Ménonville, co-founder and managing director of Very Nile initiative:
“Now VeryNile is collecting around 10 tons of plastic waste from the Nile every month. By the end of next year, we want to reach 70 tons. And we are able to recycle all this plastic. So it (the recycled plastic) is used to make some T-shirts, some car seats, some sofa covers, or its used as alternative to new fossil energy. And when we do that, we also provide job opportunities to young people.”
16. Various of volunteers making items with recycled plastic
17. Nile River during sunset
LEADIN:
An environmental initiative in Egypt has recently built a pyramid out of pressed plastic bottles its volunteers have been picking out of the Nile River.
The volunteers put together the pyramid of waste in a bid to raise awareness about the damaging effects of polluting the river.
STORYLINE:
In a country known for its ancient pyramids, a few Egyptians got together to build a new pyramid, one that is made solely from plastic waste collected from the Nile River.
Around 60 volunteers in Cairo have been removing the plastic waste that has been piling up in the river’s water and on its banks.
VeryNile, the environmental initiative behind the cleanup effort, has built a pyramid with the plastic waste to dissuade people from polluting the river.
Over the past weekend, volunteers built the pyramid by stacking pressed plastic waste that is ready for recycling.
“This was collected in 45 days only,” said Farah Abd El-Baki, the marketing manager at VeryNile, as she pointed toward a huge pile of plastic waste behind her.
Since then, volunteers with the initiative have removed tons of waste from the Nile.
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