Industrial recycling

For all the talk of Minister of Agriculture Akram Chehayeb’s waste management plan including robust recycling initiatives, it actually lets municipalities decide how to treat and dispose of their waste with few guidelines and no fixed quotas. That is to say, there is no clear picture of what recycling will look like in Lebanon should the plan – approved by the cabinet on September 9 – actually be implemented. It calls for an 18-month interim period during which municipalities will prepare their waste strategies. During this time, municipalities are to sign any contracts that need signing and build any infrastructure that needs building. As cities and villages ready themselves for garbage duties, waste from Beirut and five surrounding districts will be distributed among newly built sanitary landfills in the northern district of Akkar, the Bekaa Valley and Bourj Hammoud. A small portion of the waste is also supposed to be