Sorted plastic bottles. (Credit: Joao Sousa)
In the village of Brih in the Chouf region, a rusty old pick-up truck makes its way through the deserted streets to collect residential waste in the morning.
But the morning rounds of Rawad, the municipal employee in charge of waste collection, and his two Syrian colleagues, Bashar and Khodr, is different from that of municipal employees in other parts of Lebanon.
In Brih, there are no dumpsters filled to the brim — those were removed seven years ago. Rather, the men stop at the individual dustbins of each of the 350 households in the village.
The residents have taken it upon themselves to sort their waste based on a weekly schedule: glass and plastic on Tuesdays, cardboard on Thursdays, and organic waste on the remaining days.
“In the summer, we work on Saturdays as well, because there’s more pressure with the arrival of summer visitors,” said Nassim Ali, the local councilor in charge of environmental issues, as he welcomed the three men at their final destination.
Ali donated a 300 m² plot of land for the establishment of what has turned into a village source of pride. At the end of an alleyway, wedged between two mounds of empty bottles — as it is impossible to process thin plastic locally — glass is crushed into sand which is reused for the village’s roadsides. The thick plastic is crushed into small black balls that can be resold and the organic waste is turned into fertilizer, sold for a symbolic price of LL50,000 to local farmers.
A textbook case?
L’Orient-Le Jour visited the scene. With the smell of garbage filling the air and the buzz of flies is in full swing, a black cat climbed the mountain of rubbish. The three waste collectors joined their colleague Ghazi to make sure the garbage has been properly sorted.
Plastic bottles, cans and other solid waste are carefully separated and placed in special bins, easily identifiable by their respective colors.
“More than half of the residents recycle their waste. In the summer, fewer can recycle because some only come at weekends. For us, it’s a success story,” said al-Ali, who is satisfied with the process.
Rawad is less optimistic: “We’re trying to raise awareness among residents, but it’s not enough,” he said.
This is when the first composting phase, known as decomposition, starts. The waste should be stirred for 21 days to allow it to naturally reach the temperature required for the second phase, which is maturation, during which the decomposed waste is placed in the compost container.
As Khodr takes care of the first stage, a puff of smoke escapes, which is not worrying to these improvised professionals. “We are reaching a temperature of between 60 and 62°, which should be between 50 and 75°,” said al-Ali, who has had years of experience.
“Before the crisis, we had to process twice as much waste: it’s clear that people are consuming less because of the high cost of living,” said Sobhi Lahoud, mayor of Brih and architect of the recycling project, which could serve as a model for the country’s small towns.
For Brih and its residents, the adventure began in 2016. While the rest of the country was recovering from the waste crisis that sparked off the “You stink” protest movement, the Brih municipality decided to start a local initiative spearheaded by a handful of volunteers.
“Initially, young people in the village had launched the ‘Brih sorts’ movement to raise awareness of the problem, but waste was being collected at the same time and indiscriminately by dump trucks. We thought we had to do something,” recalled Lahoud.
The municipality decided to consult various specialized actors to set up its own waste treatment system. With NGO Terre Liban, they designed an environmental project that is “very traditional and simple, which cost $10,000,” in initial investment, said the mayor.
Recycling machines were first cobbled together with the available means, and the process was set up. Since then, the only significant change to the mechanism has been the addition of more sophisticated shredding and processing machines, purchased thanks to aid from the Netherlands.d — These machines can process between 700 and 800 kg of waste in winter, and around one ton in the summer.
An affordable model?
The positive outcome and affordable cost of the initiative could serve as a good example for the entirety of rural Lebanon. “Our system can be applied to all villages with fewer than 5,000 inhabitants,” Lahoud said.
The vast majority of the country’s villages, according to NGO Terre Liban’s figures, indicate that 80 percent of Lebanon’s villages have fewer than 5,000 inhabitants. They could perhaps follow a similar model which would place the power of waste management in their own hands at a time when the government has proved unreliable.
Despite difficulties, Lahoud does not intend to back down. “We’re going to continue for the sake of the village’s residents. Plus, resorting to a company will cost us more.”
On paper at least. With the economic crisis and high inflation that have ravaged the country for nearly four years and counting, the village's recycling mechanism has faced some serious logistical and economic challenges, said the mayor, as he stood in front of a row of machines that were halted due to a lack of electricity.
“We’ve made a generator, but it uses far too much gasoline.” While Brih’s decentralized waste management system used to enable the municipality to break even, and sometimes even make profits thanks to the fees paid by residents and the sale of recyclables, the fees don’t even cover the cost of filling up gasoline these days.
“Before 2019, households paid LL30,000 a month ($20 at the time); today, they pay LL100,000 [just over $1 on the black market rate]}, which does not cover all the costs,” he said.
In total, Lahoud collects LL2.5 million a month in charges. Some households cannot afford to pay. This is in addition to the money generated by the materials sold, i.e. around LL800,000 a month from the compost and around LL3,000,000 from other recycled materials.
As for the employees’ salaries, totaling $400, “sometimes the mayor pays them out of his own pocket,” said al-Ali.
This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour. Translation by Joelle El Khoury.