Clearing up the mess

This article has been updated from the print edition to reflect news developments.  There’s a landfill in Lebanon people usually forget about. It’s around 15 kilometers northeast of Beirut in a town called Bsalim. It draws no ire. Nearby residents do not burn tires to demand its closure. Unlike the now-shuttered Naameh sanitary landfill southwest of Beirut, Bsalim only accepts what is known as inert waste – meaning garbage that will not decompose and cause damage to the surrounding environment, like concrete, for example. In the heat of operation, it smells just fine. This was not the original plan. Bsalim was intended to be a second Naameh. However, according to both Averda CEO Malek Sukkar, whose company built both landfills, and a 2001 report commissioned by the Ministry of Environment, plans for Bsalim to become a sanitary landfill for municipal solid waste (MSW) – a stinking, co-mingled garbage stew in