Egypt Declares Sharm el-Sheikh Green City ahead of Climate Summit Next Month

The Egyptian government has declared Sharm el-Sheikh free of single-use plastic bags, as it prepares to host the COP27 climate conference next month.

The Egyptian Minister of Environment and Climate Conference envoy, Yasmine Fouad, said that the Egyptian government has taken a number of executive measures to reach the city of Sharm el-Sheikh free of single-use plastic bags, the most important of which are organizing workshops and awareness campaigns for citizens, shop owners and restaurants in the city, to raise environmental awareness.

The measures also included distributing alternatives to plastic bags represented in bags made of fabrics through outlets, in addition to a car for distributing cloth bags, as well as working to raise awareness on social media.

An initiative to clean Sharm El-Sheikh from plastic materials "land and sea" was launched in cooperation with the Governorate of South Sinai and the United Nations Development Program, with funding from the Swiss government, the European Union, and the Cairo Bank.

According to official data, Egypt consumes 12 billion tons of single-use plastic bags annually.