CAIRO, July 19 — In the labyrinthine alleyways of Cairo’s Garbage City, recycling specialist Peter Romany finds himself fielding calls from factories scrambling for plastic to plug supply shortfalls caused by the Iran war.

The 25-year-old is among the hundreds of recyclers and manufacturers across Egypt benefiting from a war-driven surge in demand ever since the United States and Iran choked off the Strait of Hormuz — a major shipping lane for the raw materials from which plastic is made.

At the heart of the boom is the sprawling eastern Cairo settlement of Manshiyet Nasser, where generations of garbage collectors have built one of the world’s most sophisticated informal recycling systems.

“Before the war, we were the ones calling factories, trying to sell our material,” Romany told AFP, standing beside towering bales of compressed plastic.

“But after the war broke out, the factories started calling us. They’d ask: How much do you have? Can you deliver today? That never used to happen.”

Built on trash

Home to more than 115,000 residents, Manshiyet Nasser is a predominantly Coptic Christian neighbourhood nestled beneath the Mokattam hill and facing Cairo’s historic Citadel.