In Cairo, with the arrival of private companies, the informal system of solid waste management, rag-and-bone men, called "zabbâlin", has been totally transformed since 2000. Our paper will provide a brief overview of how informal garbage collectors used to operate before the "privatization" and examine the actors' strategies of adjustment given the new context. These new practices reconfigure deeply the structure and organization of the zabbalîn community : it creates new professional territories based on different activities. Some of the zabbâlin have been incorporated into the formal labor sector and others have signed contracts with private companies to recycle waste. But most of them have resorted to other forms of organization, often illegal.
