The long goodbye
Government waste management scheme not fully implemented
As could have been expected, chaos is ensuing. While the situation is not as dire as it was in the hectic summer of 2015 – when protests raged and trash burned on the streets of the capital and its environs – waste in Lebanon is still far from well-managed. One full year after Tammam Salam’s government approved a four-year trash plan covering Beirut and most of Mount Lebanon, it remains only partially implemented. And the new government seems in no rush to address the country’s lingering waste crisis. A ministerial committee dedicated to the issue met only once (in early March), according to news reports. Two sources at the meeting (and a representative of a third) ignored requests for information as to which ministry would take the lead in the new cabinet.
FROM NAAMEH TO THE SEA
For more than 20 years, most of Lebanon’s garbage (50 percent, according to the Ministry of Environment) has been managed by sister companies Sukleen and Sukomi, children of parent company Averda. From street sweeping and bin collection to transport, treatment and disposal in the Bsalim and Naameh sanitary landfills – the latter permanently closed in May 2016 – Sukleen and Sukomi did it all in Beirut and five of the six districts of Mount Lebanon (excluding Jbeil). The status quo was meant to change in 2015, and the government – through the Council for Development and Reconstruction, a part of the prime minister’s office – tendered new waste management contracts for the entire country. A fully-implemented national plan would have been a first for Lebanon. Bidders had to commit to building modern treatment facilities and more sanitary landfills. Instead, within 24 hours of announcing the tender winners, the contracts were cancelled. Around a year later (in March 2016), the government finally settled on a new plan that – aside from the aforementioned lack of full implementation – seems to