Lebanese recycle glass from Beirut blast
Standing in a pile of broken glass in northern Lebanon, a man heaved shovel-loads of shards -- retrieved from Beirut after the massive explosion at its port -- into a red-hot furnace.
Melted down at a factory in the second city Tripoli, they re-emerged as molten glass ready to be recycled into traditional slim-necked water jugs.
The August 4 port explosion ripped through countless glass doors and windows when it laid waste to whole Beirut neighbourhoods, killing at least 190 people and wounding thousands more.
Volunteers, non-governmental groups and entrepreneurs have tried to salvage at least part of the tonnes of glass that littered the streets, some of it through recycling at Wissam Hammoud’s family’s glass factory.
“Here we have glass from the Beirut explosion,” said Hammoud, deputy head at the United Glass Production Company (Uniglass), as several men sorted through a mound of shards outside the building.
“Organisations are bringing it to us so that we can remanufacture it,” said the 24-year-old.
As workers washed and stacked jars behind him, Hammoud said between 20 and 22 tonnes of glass had been brought to the factory, a hive of rhythmic activity centred around the furnace that burns at 900-1,200 degrees Celsius (1,6502,190 Fahrenheit).
Nearby, three men produced jars stamped out of a mold in a carefully choreographed sequence, while another two handled the more delicate process of blowing and forming the traditional Lebanese pitchers.