Beirut: Predictably, and for the umpteenth time since the end of the civil war, Lebanese streets overflowed with refuse while officials postponed critical decisions to meet minimum sanitary conditions.
With the Naameh landfill officially closed on July 17, the company entrusted with disposal tasks, Sukleen, parked most of its 350 trucks after two sorting plants at Karantina and Al Amrusiyyih were filled to the brim.
Beirut and Mount Lebanon, home to at least 5 million people, produces nearly 10 tonnes of waste each day. While Sukleen has undeniably contributed to the cleanliness of streets during the past few years as its employees swept about 2,000 kilometres of roads, it failed to acculturate the population to manage its waste, estimated to be over 2kg per person per day, one of the highest rates in the developing world. Sukleen’s sister company, Sukomi, which oversees the two treatment plants where the waste is sorted, estimates that only 10 per cent of solid refuse is currently being recycled and reprocessed.
Notwithstanding many pledges to recycle, and although 70 per cent of the waste is organic and transformed into soil nutrients, the balance was dumped in the 400,000 squarae kilometre Naameh landfill south of Beirut where toxic materials created serious environmental and health hazards.
Affable but entirely irresponsible, including the Minister of the Environment who set the July 17, 2015 deadline to close Naameh, officials neither anticipated current conditions nor prepared alternatives in time to avoid a full-fledged health disaster. Most looked for fresh landfills to bury garbage instead of recycling it, since doing so was a hugely lucrative option for merchant politicians.
Sukleen administrators played the political game, which ensured the renewal of their contract on a regular basis, even if the landfill option was no way to handle an entire country’s refuse.
The bill for clearing up the city’s waste topped the $100 million a year, or $20 per citizen (although the price would be much cheaper if one added the estimated 4 million non-citizens who now reside in Lebanon). On Thursday, the Cabinet postponed a decision to find a solution to this pressing matter for political reasons as the Free Patriotic Movement refused to vote on any measure before an entente is reached over security appointments. In the meantime, each day adds about 10 tonnes of fresh refuse on to Lebanese streets, composting under the hot sun.
