Lebanon is drowning in its own waste

Lebanon has been in a rubbish crisis since 2015. Three years on, how are local groups paving a path for a cleaner – and healthier – future?

This beach has already been cleaned up 16 times, and had been cleaned less than a week before I stepped onto it with Joslin Kehdy, the founder of Recycle Lebanon, which arranges the clean-ups. Plastic is turning up on beaches around the world, but the difference in Lebanon is that rubbish is also being directly dumped into the sea and coastal landfills – spelling disaster for the shoreline’s ecosystem and public health.

Lebanon’s waste crisis began in 2015 when a huge landfill site closed and government authorities failed to implement a contingency plan in time to replace it; dumping and burning waste on the streets became widespread. The campaign group Human Rights Watch calls it "a national health crisis".

What do you think about this?

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