Hurghada and Marsa Alam Put Out 450–550 Tonnes of Rubbish a Day, and HEPCA Says It Has Cleared 750,000 Tonnes Since 2022

Hurghada and Marsa Alam between them put out 450 to 550 tonnes of waste a day, and the association that collects it says its four-year total has reached 750,000 tonnes, according to Tourism Daily News and Al-Ahram Gate.

The Red Sea environmental conservation association, HEPCA, said it collected 750,000 tonnes of waste in the two cities between 2022 and 2026. More than 25,000 tonnes of recyclable material was separated out of that stream, which Tourism Daily News describes as turning part of the waste back into a usable economic resource rather than sending it to final disposal.

The association also ran more than 250 beach clean-up campaigns with community participation over the period, aimed at cutting plastic pollution and protecting coral reefs and marine life — the reason, the report notes, that many visitors choose the Red Sea in the first place.

HEPCA puts the operation behind those figures at:

• 32 compactor trucks
• 59 collection lorries of varying sizes
• 8 loaders and 8 mechanical street sweepers
• 820 staff, technicians and workers, plus 400 cleaning workers in the field

Nora Ali, the MP who chairs HEPCA's board, said protecting natural wealth and biodiversity is a core driver of the association's projects, and that tourism development and environmental protection run as parallel tracks rather than competing ones.

The reports give no cost for the four years of work, no funding breakdown, and no split of the tonnage between Hurghada and Marsa Alam, so there is no way to tell from them which city generates or recovers more.

For residents, the daily figure is the useful one: a city of Hurghada's size now generates rubbish on the scale of a mid-sized European town, and the collection fleet is sized accordingly. For divers and snorkellers, the 250 clean-ups are the part that touches what they came to see.