The Lebanese divers plunge below the surface, scuba tanks on their backs and nets in hand. But what they’re looking for under the ocean surface is not treasure, it’s trash.
The group is conducting a clean-up below the waves, one of many initiatives emerging from Lebanon’s civil society and private sector in response to the government’s failure to address a long-running garbage crisis.
The dive, off the town of Tabarja, 25 km north of Beirut, proved fruitful: the divers emerged with nets full of plastic and glass bottles, rusted drink and food cans and even tyres, as a few swimmers nearby looked on bemused.
“What we saw down there, it makes your heart hurt,” said Christian Nader, a 19-year-old student, who has been diving for five years.
The event was organised by Live Love Beirut, a group of Lebanese working to promote a positive image of their country, who said more than 100 divers joined clean-ups at eight sites throughout the country over two days.
“It’s sad, it’s our sea. There should be awareness campaigns, the state should help us clean,” Nader said.
But Lebanon’s government has proved serially unable to address the country’s rubbish crisis, which reached catastrophic proportions in the summer of 2015.
Mountains of trash piled up in the streets of Beirut and its surroundings after the nation’s largest dump closed down.
That site had been years overdue for closure, and the government had pledged to find an alternative before it was shuttered but failed to do so in time.
So there was nowhere for collectors to send the rubbish produced by the two million residents of Beirut and its environs.
“The government must start to think seriously about lasting solutions and start putting them in place, even if it’s little by little,” said Lama Bashour, head of the Ecocentra environmental consultancy.
Like many experts, she emphasised the importance of “sorting and recycling” waste.
The government is reportedly now studying a plan that would seek to decrease waste and boost recycling, something that Ziad Abi Chaker, of the company Cedar Environmental, has long called for.
Founded in the late 1990s, Abi Chaker’s firm now runs eight sorting centres across Lebanon, including one in the idyllic forested peaks of Mount Lebanon’s Beit Meri.
The company boasts of sorting 80 tonnes a day at its facilities, sending reusable items on to recycling factories. — AFP
Tony Gamal-Gabriel
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