Flood of waste stirs uproar in Lebanon

In this Jan 22 photo, two tents sit in piles of garbage covering the shore days after an extended storm battered the

Mediterranean country at the Zouq Mosbeh coastal town north of Beirut, Lebanon. (AP) Lebanon’s festering trash crisis came crashing ashore this week, after residents woke up to find a powerful winter storm had laid a mantle of waste at a beach just a few minutes’ drive north of the capital, Beirut.

The scenes were a national embarrassment for a country that once prided itself on its sparkling Mediterranean coastline but appears unable to wean itself off the convenience of throwing its trash into the sea.

“Somebody needs to pay for this,” said Paul Abi Rached, a local environmentalist who spearheaded a campaign to overhaul the government’s waste policies three years ago.

Few issues have driven a wedge between the Lebanese and their leaders like garbage — the most conspicuous of the government’s many failings to provide basic services to its constituents.

Lebanon has long been plagued by daily water and electricity outages, but it was not until the trash started going uncollected in Beirut that despair erupted into a wave of protests in 2015.

Demonstrators rallied under the banner “You Stink” — a reference not only to the stench accompanying the summer heat, but to the corruption and favoritism that has defined politics and paralyzed administrative services in the country. (AP)