Lebanon’s struggle to implement a coherent waste management strategy

Calls for a sustainable solid waste management plan in Lebanon have not abated over the four years since the last garbage crisis left Beirut’s streets littered with trash in 2015. Its presence is very much still felt—or at the very least, smelt. Such calls, in fact, date to when the first series of emergency measures were implemented beginning in 1997—see timeline below—but successive attempts over the past decades have failed to find a solution to Lebanon’s trash problem. This last year has seen renewed efforts with the passage of Law 80 (2018) on integrated solid waste management, a law that had stagnated in Parliament for six years prior. Just 11 months after passing Law 80—which mandated the environment ministry to develop a national waste management strategy, albeit within six months—Minister of Environment Fady Jreissati’s proposed 10-year solid waste management roadmap was adopted by cabinet on August 27.  Any tangible progress