What 122 Egyptians told us they'll actually pay for

If you run an FMCG brand, a packaging business, or a startup in Egypt, the question is not whether consumers care about plastic. Most of them say they do. The harder question, the one that decides whether a sustainable product line makes money or sits on the shelf, is this: will people actually change what they buy, and pay more, when you hand them a greener option?

As part of the UNIDO mapping study we introduced in our first article, we put a version of that question to 122 people across Egypt. The answers are more specific and more useful than "consumers want sustainability."

How we asked

We used the Kano Model, a tool from product design that sorts features by how they affect satisfaction rather than just asking people what they like. It separates features into a few types that matter a great deal for what you decide to build:

• Must-be features are table stakes. Their absence makes people unhappy, but their presence earns you no credit. Think of a phone that makes calls.
• Performance features reward you the more you deliver them. Better is measurably better, and people will pay for the difference.
• Attractive features are delighters. They pleasantly surprise people when present, but their absence is not yet held against you.

We ran five single-use-plastic strategies through this lens: reusable and refillable containers for home use, reusable and refillable containers for on-the-go use, biodegradable plastic containers, products redesigned to use less plastic, and deposit-return schemes.

The sample was modest and worth being honest about: 122 respondents across 18 governorates, though Cairo and Giza made up about two-thirds of them, and the group skewed educated. So these are signals, not a national referendum. But the pattern in those signals is consistent enough to act on.

What came back

Four of the five strategies landed in the same category: attractive. Reusable containers for home and on-the-go, redesigned lower-plastic products, and deposit-return schemes were all delighters. People welcome them. They are pleasantly surprised by them. But they don't yet expect them, and they won't punish a brand for not offering them.

One strategy stood apart. Biodegradable plastic containers came back as a performance feature, the only one in the set. That is the most commercially loaded result in the study. A performance feature is one where satisfaction rises the more you deliver, and where people will pay for the gap between good and better.

That last point showed up directly in the willingness-to-pay data. Environmental awareness correlated moderately with willingness to pay, at about 0.62, and willingness to pay for biodegradable containers was high. Notably, environmental awareness had no significant link to income. Concern was spread across brackets, which suggests it is being driven by education and awareness campaigns rather than by who can afford to care.

Kano classification of five strategies, survey of 122 respondents (UNIDO, 2025).

What it means if you're deciding what to launch

Read together, these findings point to a clear commercial map.

The four "attractive" strategies are differentiation plays, not yet table stakes. A brand that introduces refill or deposit-return today earns goodwill and stands out, because consumers treat it as a pleasant surprise. But the flip side of a delighter is that people will not switch to it by default, and they remain price-sensitive. You cannot assume the market will pull these products through on conscience alone. You have to make them easy and affordable, or pair them with a reason to act.

That is exactly where incentives proved their worth. The study saw the strongest pull from programs that gave people something back, such as a waste-management startup that lets consumers exchange plastics for investment points in stocks and gold. When the delighter comes with a tangible reward, intention turns into behavior.

Biodegradable containers are the different case. Because they register as a performance feature with high willingness to pay, this is the one area where consumers will actively reward better execution and pay for it. The catch is on the supply side, where cost and imported feedstock remain real obstacles. We take that tension up directly in a later piece on what biodegradables actually cost in Egypt.

Two cautions round out the picture. Stakeholders noted that refill models, in particular, can hit commercial resistance despite consumer interest, so a pilot beats a full rollout. And while Gen Z came through as the fastest adopters of sustainable options, they are often not yet the primary decision-makers on household spending, which means enthusiasm in a focus group does not always convert at the till.

The point

The useful takeaway is not that Egyptians want greener products. It is that they will welcome most alternatives, reward one of them with their wallets, and need a nudge to adopt the rest. Knowing which is which, before you commit a production line or a marketing budget, is the difference between a launch and a write-off.

Testing that distinction, mapping how consumers will actually receive and pay for a new product or business model, is the kind of work the Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Competitiveness Center (IECC) does. Pairing it with the materials research from the Smart Engineering Systems Research Center (SESC) is how you make sure the thing consumers say they'll pay for is also a thing that works.

This series draws on a study made possible by many hands. We thank our co-authors Sherifa ElHady, ElHassan ElSabry, Amira Yassin, Sherif Hamed, Rana Adel, and Amir Azmy, and we are grateful to Asmaa Ahmed, Amr Hashim, Dina Tolba, Marwan Rashwan, and Salma Salah for their critical contributions. We also thank Asmaa Ahmed and Merna Hammad of Nile University, whose coordination and industry engagement were instrumental to the work.

We are grateful to Matthias Pfaff and Nahomi Nishio at UNIDO Headquarters, and to Eman Shaaban, Ahmed Ibrahim, and Abdulrahman Hag Elamin at the UNIDO Egypt office, for their guidance and for facilitating access to key data. Finally, we thank the Ministry of Environment and the industry leaders, policymakers, NGOs, and private-sector representatives who gave their time to the interviews and the validation workshop, and the Government of Japan, whose funding made the study possible.

About the authors

Ahmed Saleh is the Executive Director of the Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Competitiveness Center (IECC) at Nile University, where he works at the intersection of technology management, innovation, and entrepreneurship to strengthen industry competitiveness in Egypt and the region. An engineer by training, he has led innovation and venture-building programs, including work with Nile University's NilePreneurs initiative. He is currently a PhD candidate at Nile University's Graduate School of Management of Technology (MOT), where his research interests include technology commercialization in developing economies and digital transformation strategies.

Irene Samy Fahim is a Professor in the Industrial and Service Engineering and Management department at Nile University and Director of the Smart Engineering Systems Research Center (SESC). A Fulbright alumna, she holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the American University in Cairo. Her research centers on sustainable materials, including bioplastics, natural-fiber-reinforced composites, and non-plastic single-use tableware made from sugarcane bagasse. She is a Senior Member of the IEEE and a recipient of the L'Oreal-UNESCO For Women in Science award (Egypt, 2021), the State Encouragement Award for Women (2020), and the Hazem Ezzat Research Excellence Award (2021).

Read the full study: Mapping Study of Alternatives to Single-Use Plastics: Reducing Single-Use Plastics in Egypt (UNIDO, 2025), commissioned under the project "Supporting the Promotion of Circular Economy Practices in the Single-Use Plastic Value Chain," with funding from the Government of Japan.

About the centers: The Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Competitiveness Center (IECC) and the Smart Engineering Systems Research Center (SESC) at Nile University.