No end in sight to Lebanon’s garbage crisis
beirut — Arpi Kruzian has lived on the coastline east of Beirut for three decades. But now her balcony has a different view: a massive mound of trash rising on the Mediterranean.
“This used to be the sea,” she said outside her home. “One day we looked out, we couldn’t see the sea.”
Trucks and bulldozers have piled waste at a land reclamation site there since last year. “In the summer, we died from the stench,” she said. “You can’t control the smell... it seeps in from under the doors.”
Landfills and dumpsites — many infamously known as “garbage mountains” — have mushroomed across Lebanon since the 1990s.
The mess peaked in 2015 when the capital’s main landfill shut down, after running well beyond its expiry date.
Heaps of rubbish festered in the summer heat for months. Politicians
Lebanon seems to be addicted to these coastal landfills. They cannot keep jumping from one emergency solution to the next ...It is remarkable that we don’t have a national law regulating waste Bassam Khawaja, Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch
wrangled over what to do, and the trash crisis of 2015 sparked a protest movement. It became a glaring symbol of a sectarian power system unable to meet basic needs like electricity and water.
The government has since managed to get the waste off the streets and out of Beirut, partly through more landfills.
But residents and environmentalists accuse it of failing to reach a permanent solution — warning of dire consequences on the Mediterranean and public health.
Last month, the cabinet agreed to expand two seaside landfills at the outskirts of Beirut. Both had started as stop-gaps to resolve the 2015 crisis. “Lebanon seems to be addicted to these coastal landfills,” said Bassam Khawaja, Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch. “They cannot keep jumping from one emergency solution to the next ...It is remarkable that we don’t have a national law regulating waste.”
Authorities have not conducted any studies on the environmental impact of the two dumps, near the Beirut airport and the Bourj Hammoud neighbourhood, he said.
The expansion will include a composting plant at the landfill by the airport — which Khawaja said would be “an important step if it actually happens”. —