A rubbish decision

Lebanon has never gotten nation-wide waste management right. In 1971 the government hired a local consultant to help write a plan for treating and disposing of the country’s waste, according to the consultant’s website. While the company declined an interview request, the existence of hundreds of open dumps around the country attest to the fact that it was never implemented. Even if it had been put into practice, it would have been a casualty of the civil war. In the quarter of a century since the war ended, policy makers did very little to soundly manage the nation’s garbage. In 1997, cabinet enacted an emergency plan for Beirut and its immediate suburbs. It awarded contracts for waste collection and disposal to companies founded by Maysarah Sukkar, a Lebanese who had been successfully operating waste incinerators in Saudi Arabia. His local company began operations which it is still conducting under the