Founded in November 2012, the Egypt Green Building Council (Egypt GBC) is a non-profit organization under the laws of the Arab Republic of Egypt (Registration Number #8979). Egypt GBC is an emerging member of the World Green Building Council, a global network of 70 Green Building Councils in varying stages of development and their 32,000 member companies, which aims to establish green buildings around the world and facilitate change.
Recognizing an urgent need to establish a platform for sustainable building practices specific to Egypt, Egypt GBC was formed by a group of thirteen leading authorities in the field of architecture, sustainability, and green buildings, including university professors, and green building architects, engineers and practitioners.
The budget allocation process for this project started in 2010 with discussions between the American University in Cairo’s (AUC) School of Science and Engineering and the Housing and Building National Research Centre (HBRC), resulting in a Ministerial decree to form a committee. Due to lengthy governmental processes though, little came of this. It wasn’t until Dr. Salah El Haggar, Eng. Karim Farah, and Eng. Sherine Fahmy created a civil association for green building in Egypt that the idea started to take hold. By conducting case studies about successful green projects around the world, it was discovered that many were affiliated with their respective Green Building Councils, prompting a decision to begin the process of becoming a member of the World Green Building Council.
Tailoring For Local Conditions
After beginning the process of becoming part of the World GBC, the challenge then lay in meeting the requirements for the international ratings systems that local developers would apply. The requirements often involve importing materials, which was costly and contradicted the aim of sustainability. The solution was to create a local rating system, taking into account the Egyptian ecosystem and materials. The expertise was available and the market was ready.
In 2015, local experts created an Egyptian rating system: TARSHEED for Affordable Housing. It was developed to highlight the Net-Zero Waste concept, which focuses on reducing, reusing and recovering waste and transforming it in to valuable resources, ensuring that no solid waste is sent to landfills. The plan was put into action in January of 2018, making Egypt one of ten countries to include this concept in their rating systems.
Since then, Egypt has seen the launch of Tarsheed Commercial, Tarsheed Communities, Tarsheed Residential, and Tarsheed Schools, all based on the Net-Zero Waste concept. Plans are in place to launch Tarsheed Healthcare Facilities by the end of 2022.
