The French firm Veolia Environnement and the Governorate of Alexandria are awarded for exemplary public and private sector collaboration in Alexandria's solid waste management.

This first Public Private Partnership of its in the Egyptian waste management sector was signed in September 2000 and launched in 2001 for a period of 15 years. It is run jointly and successfully by the Governorate of Alexandria and a private firm, Veolia Environnement, a leading private provider of environmental services to municipalities and industry.

The main objective of the partnership is to provide integrated management for the 1 million tons of waste generated every year by over 5 million inhabitants, for the whole Governorate of Alexandria, from collection and cleaning to treatment, and final recycling. It also includes compost applications, the rehabilitation of two old dump sites, as well as the collection and treatment of medical waste. The scheme provides employment to 4,500 city cleaners, and provides for the collection and the treatment of 2,500 tons of waste every day (3,100 tons during summer). The success lies in the fact that 100 percent of the waste is treated while 150,000 tons of compost are produced and sold every year to local farmers, thus boosting farming in the area.

The waste project has registered for a listing as a certified Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) within the framework of the Kyoto Protocol because it involves landfill gas recovery expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 3.7 million metric tons over the period 2005-2015.