The Lebanese solid waste crisis has made a comeback as the Jdeideh landfill north of Beirut stopped receiving garbage from Kesrouan, the north Metn and some Beirut areas after reaching full capacity.
A day later, Prime Minister Hassan Diab chaired a meeting with concerned officials in an attempt to avoid trash from filling the streets.
However, the meeting failed to reach any outcome after several Metn deputies rejected a proposal to expand the Jdeideh landfill.
“It is surprising how the government leaves it to the last minute to resolve the problem and then gives the Lebanese two options of either expanding the landfill or witnessing waste piling up on the streets,” Kataeb Party MP Elias Hankash told Asharq Al-Awsat on Sunday.
He pointed out at the failure of the successive governments to resolve the crisis in the past 30 years.
“During the meeting with Diab on Friday, I proposed to move the solid waste to an arid border area, but the concerned parties rejected my proposal, claiming the transportation cost is high,” Hankash said.
Lebanon’s trash crisis goes back to 2015 when garbage built up on the streets of Beirut, as governments have been relying on stopgap measures and temporary fixes that do not solve the country’s waste management problems.
Samar Khalil, an environmental management specialist and member of the Waste Management Coalition in Lebanon told Asharq Al-Awsat that mass protests, which erupted against the government on Oct. 17, and the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a drop in solid waste in Beirut and Mount Lebanon from 3,500 to 2,500 tons per day.
“This decline extended the date of the Jdeideh landfill reaching full capacity. However, similar to previous cabinets, the current government only looks at the problem when the problem goes out of hand,” she said.
The government studied a proposal last month either to expand the landfill or to reopen the Naameh dump, which closed at the end of 2016.
