A new trash plan in the pipeline

Agriculture Minister Akram Chehayeb’s waste management strategy is the equivalent of the central government finally throwing up its hands after years of writing plans it could never implement and telling municipalities, “Fine, you deal with your garbage.” For most of the country, this is not exactly a deviation from the status quo. Outside of Beirut and most of Mount Lebanon (excluding the Jbeil district) – municipalities have been dealing with their own trash. Many have done a very bad job from an environmental and public health perspective. While the country has a 99 percent waste collection rate, some 26 percent of its refuse was open dumped or burned prior to the July 17 closing of Lebanon’s largest sanitary landfill near Naameh, when that percentage substantially increased. An expert who helped draft Chehayeb’s plan – which was written in four days – explains that municipalities will be given training on best