Lebanese Kick up Stink over Smell Fix for Garbage Woes

Garbage piled on the streets of Beirut. (AFP file photo)
Garbage piled on the streets of Beirut. (AFP file photo)
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Lebanese Kick up Stink over Smell Fix for Garbage Woes

Garbage piled on the streets of Beirut. (AFP file photo)
Garbage piled on the streets of Beirut. (AFP file photo)

Sitting at a plastic table outside her flatbread sandwich shop in the Lebanese capital, Nadime Yazbeck says she wishes the government would deal with the stench from the local trash dump.

"They really need to find a solution to these smells," said the 66-year-old Beirut resident, in a spotless white t-shirt and hair net.

Four years after a garbage crisis sparked political protests in Lebanon, the stench of trash is back and government plans to quell the smell have only triggered demands for better waste management, said AFP.

In Yazbeck's neighborhood of Bourj Hammoud, a seaside landfill that reopened to solve the 2015 crisis will be full by the end of the summer.

Near the airport, another overwhelmed landfill is to start refusing waste from neighboring areas in protest.

On and off for more than a year, the acrid smell of decomposing refuse has wafted into homes and businesses in the capital.

Even kilometers away from landfills, residents have raced to close windows to keep out the stink.

Visitors to the tiny Mediterranean nation have been welcomed off flights by unpleasant odors drifting over the airport.

In June, Lebanon's environment ministry said it had asked an expert to look into the matter and help neutralize the smells.

Lebanese-French agronomy engineer Aime Menassa determined causes of the stench to include household waste, "badly stabilized compost", and sewage.

His report unleashed a wave of sarcasm online over a perceived outsider stating the obvious.

"Isn't there a Lebanese who can smell it?" one person asked on Twitter.

Odor suppression

Beyond being unpleasant, the smells also present potential health hazards.

This winter, researchers at the American University of Beirut measured the rate of hydrogen sulphide, a smelly gas produced by landfills, in the air in Bourj Hammoud.

Michele Citton, a waste and water expert at AUB, said the levels of the gas -- which has been correlated with possible negative health effects -- were higher than expected.

A 2018 study in northern China found children living near a landfill were more likely to have deficient immunity and impaired lung function, the latter strongly related to hydrogen sulphide.

But odor suppression is not a sustainable solution, Citton said.

"What these smells are saying to the world and to the community in Beirut is basically that there is a deep need to find alternative methods to solid waste management in Lebanon."

Multi-confessional Lebanon has been rocked by political crises in recent years, especially since the 2011 outbreak of war in neighboring Syria.

In 2015, a landfill closure caused trash to pile up in the streets, sparking protests against political leaders, including under the cry "You Stink".

The demonstrations have since died down, but mistrust in the ruling class -- that includes former warlords during the 1975-1990 civil conflict -- still runs high.

Menassa insists his offer to treat the smell is only meant to be a temporary solution, said AFP.

Under his plan, a "biodegradable" solution would be sprayed onto the surface or spread through mist into the air at three sites across the capital, he said.

Transforming smelly gas into minerals, the solution would clean garbage trucks traveling in and out of two sorting stations, and lessen the stench from the composting site near Bourj Hammoud.

Temporary solution?

But "the idea is not to mist forever", he said, of the odor-tackling practice that needs to be maintained 24/7 to be effective.

"The solution is selective rubbish collection... to avoid having to have to bury these huge volumes in the final landfill."

Experts say half of Lebanon's waste is organic, and could be better composted if separated out from recyclables at the household level.

Environment Minister Fady Jreissati, who came into office in January, says only eight percent of Lebanon's rubbish is recycled.

His plan for the next two years includes trying to encourage better rubbish sorting, and building a new composting plant near the airport by next spring, he told July's edition of economic magazine Le Commerce du Levant.

He also said a "credible option" would be to widen the Bourj Hammoud landfill -- but that would mean destroying an adjacent fishing port.

Activists, meanwhile, have protested plans to open incinerators in Beirut, which they fear will be badly managed and further pollute the atmosphere.

And as grey smog clings to the skyline, others have questioned the ministry halting air quality monitors due to budget cuts.

Claude Jabre, a You Stink activist who lives in Bourj Hammoud, denounced what he saw as vested business interests and a lack of political will to find alternative solutions.

"We have the energy and the expertise to create what's called a circular economy" aimed at minimizing waste, he said.

"Why can't we make profit in a way that doesn't damage the environment?"



Rising Seas and Shifting Sands Attack Ancient Alexandria from Below 

A view of buildings on the corniche in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, Egypt, April 20, 2025. (Reuters)
A view of buildings on the corniche in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, Egypt, April 20, 2025. (Reuters)
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Rising Seas and Shifting Sands Attack Ancient Alexandria from Below 

A view of buildings on the corniche in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, Egypt, April 20, 2025. (Reuters)
A view of buildings on the corniche in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, Egypt, April 20, 2025. (Reuters)

From her ninth-floor balcony over Alexandria's seafront, Eman Mabrouk looked down at the strip of sand that used to be the wide beach where she played as a child.

"The picture is completely different now," she said. The sea has crept closer, the concrete barriers have got longer and the buildings around her have cracked and shifted.

Every year 40 of them collapse across Egypt's second city, up from one on average a decade ago, a study shows.

The storied settlement that survived everything from bombardment by the British in the 1880s to attacks by crusaders in the 1160s is succumbing to a subtler foe infiltrating its foundations.

The warming waters of the Mediterranean are rising, part of a global phenomenon driven by climate change. In Alexandria, that is leading to coastal erosion and sending saltwater seeping through the sandy substrate, undermining buildings from below, researchers say.

"This is why we see the buildings in Alexandria being eroded from the bottom up," said Essam Heggy, a water scientist at the University of Southern California who co-wrote the study published in February describing a growing crisis in Alexandria and along the whole coast.

The combination of continuous seawater rises, ground subsidence and coastal erosion means Alexandria’s coastline has receded on average 3.5 meters a year over the last 20 years, he told Reuters.

"For many people who see that climatic change is something that will happen in the future and we don’t need to worry about it, it’s actually happening right now, right here," Heggy said.

The situation is alarming enough when set out in the report - "Soaring Building Collapses in Southern Mediterranean Coasts" in the journal "Earth's Future". For Mabrouk, 50, it has been part of day-to-day life for years.

She had to leave her last apartment when the building started moving.

"It eventually got slanted. I mean, after two years, we were all ... leaning," she told Reuters. "If you put something on the table, you would feel like it was rolling."

BARRIERS, BULLDOZERS, CRACKS

Egypt's government has acknowledged the problem and promised action. Submerged breakwaters reduce coastal wave action and truckloads of sand replenish stripped beaches.

Nine concrete sea barriers have been set up "to protect the delta and Alexandria from the impact of rising sea waves," Alexandria's governor, Ahmed Khaled Hassan, said.

The barriers stretch out to sea, piles of striking geometric shapes, their clear curves and lines standing out against the crumbling, flaking apartment blocks on the land.

Authorities are trying to get in ahead of the collapses by demolishing buildings at risk.

Around 7,500 were marked for destruction and 55,000 new housing units will be built, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly told a crowd as he stood on one of the concrete barriers on July 14.

"There isn't a day that passes without a partial or complete collapse of at least one building that already had a demolition order," Madbouly said.

Some are hopeful the measures can make a difference.

"There are no dangers now ... They have made their calculations," coffee shop owner Shady Mostafa said as he watched builders working on one of the barriers.

Others are less sure. Alexandria's 70-km (45-mile) long coastal zone was marked down as the most vulnerable in the whole Mediterranean basin in the February report.

Around 2% of the city's housing stock – or about 7,000 buildings – were probably unsafe, it added.

Every day, more people are pouring into the city - Alexandria's population has nearly doubled to about 5.8 million in the last 25 years, swollen by workers and tourists, according to Egypt's statistics agency CAPMAS. Property prices keep going up, despite all the risks, trackers show.

Sea levels are rising across the world, but they are rising faster in the Mediterranean than in many other bodies of water, partly because the relative shallowness of its sea basin means it is warming up faster.

The causes may be global, but the impacts are local, said 26-year-old Alexandria resident Ahmed al-Ashry.

"There's a change in the buildings, there's a change in the streets," he told Reuters.

"Every now and then we try to renovate the buildings, and in less than a month, the renovations start to fall apart. Our neighbors have started saying the same thing, that cracks have started to appear."