Country Drowning in its Own Garbage Dump

Lebanon has suffered a trash crisis since 2015. Three years have passed: how are the activists there paving the way for a cleaner and healthier future?

We are about five meters from the Mediterranean Sea. To my right, the Zouk Mosbeh power plant keeps pumping thick gray smoke into the blue sky. Jounieh Valley towered along the shoreline behind me, a metropolis filled with hotels and entertainment venues, just outside the Beirut city limits.

To the left, I could see a kind of resort in the distance. But what I smelled-and looked around me-was just a pile of rubbish.

This beach has been cleaned 16 times, and it has been cleaned less than a week before I visit it with Joslin Kehdy, founder of Recycle Lebanon, who handles the clean-up efforts.

Plastics keep popping up on the beaches around the world. But in Lebanon, garbage is also directly discharged into the sea and landfill on the coast causing disasters for coastal ecosystems and public health.