Exporting Lebanon's Trash Back to Spotlight

A suggestion to export the trash that has been piling in the country since July seems to emerge again, despite the fact that it is a complicated and expensive solution, unnamed sources following up closely on the trash crisis told the daily al-Akhbar on Monday.

There are three companies interested in taking this matter into their own hands and they have in that regard contacted the premiership and the committee of Agriculture Minister Akram Shehayyeb, and the discussions have reached an advanced phase, the sources added.

However a decision to transport the garbage abroad faces a number of hurdles mainly that it requires a cabinet convention and the cabinet is disrupted currently.

Adding to the political obstacles, the plan if approved, faces technical problems because the trash requires almost 20 days for packaging, taking into consideration the international specification standards in addition to the approval of the countries that wish to import the trash.

Streets in parts of Lebanon turned into rivers of garbage on Sunday as heavy rains washed through mountains of trash that have piled up during a months-long waste collection crisis.

The scenes come three months into a crisis precipitated by the closure of Lebanon's largest landfill in July, and the government's failure to find an alternative.

The crisis sparked a protest movement led by the "You Stink" activist group, which brought thousands of people into the streets for several weeks of demonstrations.

The cabinet in early September approved a plan that involved finding new sites for landfills and temporarily reopening the closed Naameh site for the immediate disposal of already-accumulated waste.

But the plan has run into a series of obstacles, including the refusal of residents around Naameh to allow its reopening and protests by people living near prospective new landfill sites.

Activists and several ministers have long warned that the arrival of winter, which often brings heavy rains to Lebanon, risked dispersing months worth of trash that has accumulated in open dumps.

"You Stink" activists wearing protective suits and facemasks sorted trash that had washed into the Beirut river from piles where it has been dumped along its banks on Sunday.

"We are proud to be 'waste workers' in this country, for trash, corruption, and the corrupt," the group wrote on its Facebook page.

It accused Lebanon's politicians of doing nothing "while the country drowns in their trash as a result of rampant, criminal corruption and inaction.

D.A.

M.T.