Iraqis Clean up River as First Green Projects Take Root

The garbage flows downriver, clogging riverbanks, wetlands and threatening wildlife -- here men row a canoe on the Tigris in Iraq's southern city of Nasiriyah Asaad NIAZI AFP/File
The garbage flows downriver, clogging riverbanks, wetlands and threatening wildlife -- here men row a canoe on the Tigris in Iraq's southern city of Nasiriyah Asaad NIAZI AFP/File
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Iraqis Clean up River as First Green Projects Take Root

The garbage flows downriver, clogging riverbanks, wetlands and threatening wildlife -- here men row a canoe on the Tigris in Iraq's southern city of Nasiriyah Asaad NIAZI AFP/File
The garbage flows downriver, clogging riverbanks, wetlands and threatening wildlife -- here men row a canoe on the Tigris in Iraq's southern city of Nasiriyah Asaad NIAZI AFP/File

Garbage clogs the banks of Iraq's Tigris River in Baghdad but an army of young volunteers is cleaning it, a rare environmental project in the war-battered country.

With boots and gloves, they pick up soggy trash, water bottles, aluminum cans and muddy styrofoam boxes, part of a green activist campaign called the Cleanup Ambassadors.

"This is the first time this area has been cleaned since 2003," shouts a passer-by about the years of conflict since a US-led invasion toppled dictator Saddam Hussein.

The war is over but Iraq faces another huge threat: a host of interrelated environmental problems from climate change and rampant pollution to dust storms and water scarcity.

The 200 volunteers at work in Baghdad want to be part of the solution, removing garbage from a stretch of one of the mighty rivers that gave birth to the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia.

"It breaks my heart to see the banks of the Tigris in this state," said one 19-year-old volunteer, who gave only her first name, Rassel, working under Baghdad's Imams Bridge.

"We want to change this reality. I want to make my city more beautiful."

The task is Herculean in a country where it remains common for people to drop their trash on the ground.

The green banks of the Tigris, popular for picnics by families and groups of friends, are usually littered with waste, from single-use plastic bags to the disposable tips of hookah pipes, especially after public holidays.

"There is a lot of plastic, nylon bags and corks," said Ali, also 19 and an organizer of the cleanup event.

The group then handed their collected waste to the Baghdad City Council which took it away, bound for a landfill.

More often the garbage ends up directly in the Tigris. It is one of Iraq's two major waterways, along with the Euphrates, that face a host of environmental pressures.

The rivers or their tributaries are dammed upstream in Turkey and Iran, over-used along the way, and polluted with domestic, industrial and agricultural waste.

The trash that flows downriver clogs riverbanks and wetlands and poses a threat to wildlife, both terrestrial and aquatic.

When the water empties into the Gulf, plastic bags are often ingested by turtles and dolphins and block the airways and stomachs of many other species, says a United Nations paper.

In Iraq -- which has suffered four decades of conflict and years of political and economic turmoil -- separating and recycling waste has yet to become a priority for most people.

The country also lacks proper infrastructure for waste collection and disposal, said Azzam Alwash, head of the non-governmental group Nature Iraq.

"There are no environmentally friendly landfills and plastic recycling is not economically viable," he said.

Most garbage ends up in open dumps where it is burned, sending plumes of acrid smoke into the air.

This happens in Iraq's southern Mesopotamian Marshes, one of the world's largest inland deltas, which Saddam once had largely drained. They were named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2016, both for their biodiversity and ancient history.

Today a round-the-clock fire outside the town of Souq al-Shuyukh, which is the gateway to the marshes, burns thousands of tons of garbage under the open sky, sending white smoke drifting many kilometers away.

"Open burning of waste is a source of air pollution, and the real cost is the shortening of Iraqi lives," said Alwash. "But the state has no money to build recycling facilities."

Even worse is the air pollution caused by flaring -- burning off the gas that escapes during oil extraction.

This toxic cocktail has contributed to a rise in respiratory illnesses and greenhouse gas emissions, a phenomenon the UN's climate experts have voiced alarm about.

Environment Minister Jassem al-Falahi admitted in comments to the official news agency INA that waste incineration's "toxic gases affect people's lives and health".

But so far there have been few government initiatives to tackle Iraq's environmental woes, and so projects like the Tigris cleanup are leading the way for now.

Ali, the volunteer, hopes that their effort will have a more long-term effect by helping to change attitudes.

"Some people have stopped throwing their waste on the street," he said, "and some have even joined us."



Hungary's Oldest Library is Fighting to Save Books from Beetle Infestation

Books are kept in hermetically sealed plastic sacks for disinfection at the Pannonhalma Archabbey's library in Pannonhalma, Hungary, Thursday, July 3, 2025, as a beetle infestation threatens its ancient collection. (AP Photo/Bela Szandelszky)
Books are kept in hermetically sealed plastic sacks for disinfection at the Pannonhalma Archabbey's library in Pannonhalma, Hungary, Thursday, July 3, 2025, as a beetle infestation threatens its ancient collection. (AP Photo/Bela Szandelszky)
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Hungary's Oldest Library is Fighting to Save Books from Beetle Infestation

Books are kept in hermetically sealed plastic sacks for disinfection at the Pannonhalma Archabbey's library in Pannonhalma, Hungary, Thursday, July 3, 2025, as a beetle infestation threatens its ancient collection. (AP Photo/Bela Szandelszky)
Books are kept in hermetically sealed plastic sacks for disinfection at the Pannonhalma Archabbey's library in Pannonhalma, Hungary, Thursday, July 3, 2025, as a beetle infestation threatens its ancient collection. (AP Photo/Bela Szandelszky)

Tens of thousands of centuries-old books are being pulled from the shelves of a medieval abbey in Hungary in an effort to save them from a beetle infestation that could wipe out centuries of history.

The 1,000-year-old Pannonhalma Archabbey is a sprawling Benedictine monastery that is one of Hungary's oldest centers of learning and a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Restoration workers are removing about 100,000 handbound books from their shelves and carefully placing them in crates, the start of a disinfection process that aims to kill the tiny beetles burrowed into them, The Associated Press reported.

The drugstore beetle, also known as the bread beetle, is often found among dried foodstuffs like grains, flour and spices. But they also are attracted to the gelatin and starch-based adhesives found in books.

They have been found in a section of the library housing around a quarter of the abbey's 400,000 volumes.

“This is an advanced insect infestation which has been detected in several parts of the library, so the entire collection is classified as infected and must be treated all at the same time,” said Zsófia Edit Hajdu, the chief restorer on the project. “We've never encountered such a degree of infection before.”

The beetle invasion was first detected during a routine library cleaning.

Employees noticed unusual layers of dust on the shelves and then saw that holes had been burrowed into some of the book spines. Upon opening the volumes, burrow holes could be seen in the paper where the beetles chewed through.

The abbey at Pannonhalma was founded in 996, four years before the establishment of the Kingdom of Hungary. Sitting upon a tall hill in northwestern Hungary, the abbey houses the country's oldest collection of books, as well as many of its earliest and most important written records.

For over 1,000 years, the abbey has been among the most prominent religious and cultural sites in Hungary and all of Central Europe, surviving centuries of wars and foreign incursions such as the Ottoman invasion and occupation of Hungary in the 16th century.

Ilona Ásványi, director of the Pannonhalma Archabbey library, said she is “humbled” by the historical and cultural treasures the collection holds whenever she enters.

“It is dizzying to think that there was a library here a thousand years ago, and that we are the keepers of the first book catalogue in Hungary,” she said.

Among the library’s most outstanding works are 19 codices, including a complete Bible from the 13th century. It also houses several hundred manuscripts predating the invention of the printing press in the mid-15th century and tens of thousands of books from the 16th century.

While the oldest and rarest prints and books are stored separately and have not been infected, Ásványi said any damage to the collection represents a blow to cultural, historical and religious heritage.

“When I see a book chewed up by a beetle or infected in any other way, I feel that no matter how many copies are published and how replaceable the book is, a piece of culture has been lost,” she said.

To kill the beetles, the crates of books are being placed into tall, hermetically sealed plastic sacks from which all oxygen is removed. After six weeks in the pure nitrogen environment, the abbey hopes all the beetles will be destroyed.

Before being reshelved, each book will be individually inspected and vacuumed. Any book damaged by the pests will be set aside for later restoration work.

The abbey, which hopes to reopen the library at the beginning of next year, believes the effects of climate change played a role in spurring the beetle infestation as average temperatures rise rapidly in Hungary.

Hajdu, the chief restorer, said higher temperatures have allowed the beetles to undergo several more development cycles annually than they could in cooler weather.

“Higher temperatures are favorable for the life of insects,” she said. “So far we've mostly dealt with mold damage in both depositories and in open collections. But now I think more and more insect infestations will appear due to global warming.”

The library’s director said life in a Benedictine abbey is governed by a set of rules in use for nearly 15 centuries, a code that obliges them to do everything possible to save its vast collection.

“It says in the Rule of Saint Benedict that all the property of the monastery should be considered as of the same value as the sacred vessel of the altar,” Ásványi said. “I feel the responsibility of what this preservation and conservation really means.”