The Zabbaleen (Egyptian Arabic: زبالين Zabbalīn, IPA: [zæbbæˈliːn]) is a word which literally means "garbage people" in Egyptian Arabic. The contemporary use of the word in Egyptian Arabic is to mean "garbage collectors". In cultural contexts, the word refers to teenagers and adults who have served as Cairo's informal garbage collectors since approximately the 1940s. The Zabbaleen (singular: زبال Zabbāl, [zæbˈbæːl]) are also known as Zarraba (singular: Zarrab), which means "pig-pen operators." The word Zabbalīn came from the Egyptian Arabic word zebāla ([zeˈbæːlæ], زبالة) which means "garbage".

Spread out among seven different settlements scattered in the Greater Cairo Urban Region, the Zabbaleen population is between 50,000 and 70,000. The largest settlement is Mokattam village, nicknamed "Garbage City," located at the foot of the Mokattam Plateau, next to Manshiyat Nasser. The Zabbaleen community has a population of around 20,000 to 30,000, over 90 percent of which are poor Coptic Christians living in self-built homes, many in slum conditions.

For several generations, the Zabbaleen supported themselves by collecting trash door-to-door from the residents of Cairo for nearly no charge. The Zabbaleen recycle up to 80 percent of the waste that they collect via local Egyptian companies, whereas most Western garbage collecting companies only recycle 20 to 25 percent of the waste that they collect.

The Zabbaleen use donkey-pulled carts and pickup trucks to transport the garbage that they collect from the residents of Cairo. They then transport the garbage to their homes in Mokattam Village, where they sort the collected items, then either sell the sorted items to middlemen or create new materials from it themselves. The living situation for the Zabbaleen is poor; they live amongst the trash that they sort in their village, and with the pigs to which they feed their organic waste. Nevertheless, the Zabbaleen have formed a strong and tight-knit community.

However, their way of life has come under threat after the Cairo municipal authorities’ decision in 2003 to award annual contracts of $50 million to three multinational garbage disposal companies. The government authorities do not compensate the Zabbaleen for these changes, and as a result, the takeover of waste collection threatens the socio-economic sustainability of the Zabbaleen community.

The Zabbaleen faced a major challenge when the Egyptian Agricultural Ministry ordered the culling of all pigs in April 2009 in response to national fears over the possible spread of H1N1 influenza. This governmental decision posed a major setback to the Zabbaleen because pigs, who eat the organic waste, are an essential component to their recycling and sorting system. Immediately after the culling of pigs, observers noticed a visible increase in piles of trash and rotting food on the streets of Cairo. There are also worries that the Egyptian government is seeking to remove the Mokattam Village entirely and relocate the Zabbaleen further outside of Cairo by a further 25 km, to a 50-feddan (51.9-acre) plot in Cairo's eastern desert settlement of Katameya.

Around the 1910s, a group of Muslim migrants from the Dakhla oasis in the Western desert of Egypt relocated to Cairo in an area known as Bab El Bahr, which is situated between Attaba and Ramses square in downtown Cairo. These people are known as the Wahiya (singular: wahi), which means people of the oasis. The Wahiya assumed the sole responsibility for the collection and disposal of Cairo's household waste under the framework of contracts with building owners in Cairo. In this system, the Wahiya paid the owners of buildings an initial sum and then collected monthly fees from the tenants for their services.

In the 1930s and 40s, there was a second wave of migration. This new group, mostly landless peasants, is known as the Zabbaleen. The descendants of subsistence farmers, the Zabbaleen originate from the El Badari district in Asyut, a rural region in Upper Egypt, which is the southern part of Egypt. As farming ceased to be a viable way of life, the Zabbaleen faced economic hardships which prompted them to migrate to Cairo in search of work. Henceforth, the Wahiya collaborated with the Zabbaleen, who purchased waste from the Wahiya for use as fodder for pig farming. Initially, the Zabbaleen settled in the Imbaba district of the Giza governorate, but were given a four-day eviction notice from the governor of Giza in 1970. Thereafter, the Zabbaleen settled mainly in an abandoned quarry at the foot of the Mokattam hills, east of Cairo, which is under the jurisdiction of the Cairo Governorate. Although the governor of Cairo granted the Zabbaleen administrative permission to settle in the area, he did not issue a lease or legal tenure. Thus, because of their precarious situation, the Zabbaleen initially lived in makeshift settlements of tin huts, made mostly of barrels that the Zabbaleen found amongst the waste that they collected. This Zabbaleen community later emerged as the informal garbage collectors and recyclers of Cairo. The literal meaning of the word Zabbaleen is garbage-men (singular: Zabbal). The Zabbaleen are also known as Zarraba (singular: Zarrab), which means pig pen operators, because they raise pigs that eat the organic components of the waste that they collect.