Alum Uses Philosophy Studies at AUC to Found Go Clean Initiative

“Go clean is all about changing people's perspective on recycling so that their brains give them negative signs when they witness environmental hazards,” said Mohamed Hamdy ‘13, founder of Go Clean, a recycling solutions company aiming to increase public environmental awareness. Go Clean has recently won the European Union’s Most Promising Environmental Initiative Award at the Alex Go Green, hosted by the French Embassy in Egypt.

Hamdy studied philosophy at AUC, which he believes is directly proportional to whatever career he pursues.

"Philosophy is all about teaching people how to think," affirmed Hamdy. "Besides giving me credibility, studying philosophy at AUC gave me the mental power to negotiate for hours with CEOs of multinational companies with a concrete logic that I've gained during my undergraduate studies."

Go Clean gets people involved by allowing them to separate their own recyclables and rewarding them for it  “We give the consumers cash or household products in return or they can donate this cash through us, so it is a win-win situation," said Hamdy.

It all began in 2017 when Hamdy realized that Egypt needs more consideration and more practical steps toward recycling to save the environment. “We thought about an incentive to encourage people and change their mindsets regarding throwing their recyclables," he explained.

Go Clean started with only recycling for factories and companies, but expanded this year to a household door-to-door initiative, which includes first asking customers to sort their recyclables by separating plastics, metals, and papers, then having these customers send their locations to Go Clean for their recyclables to be picked up. The final stage is rewarding customers according to the weight of the recyclables by exchanging them with cash or household items.

“We are looking for more expansion," said Hamdy. "We want everyone to know us and call us. We want our services to reach every corner of Egypt. We are now covering Cairo, Giza and Alexandria, and more governorates are definitely in our future plans."