Dozens of lorries begin carrying garbage swamping Beirut to landfills as temporary solution to eight-month crisis.
The Lebanese government has launched a bid to dispose of the mountains of trash swamping the suburbs of the capital Beirut, in what residents hoped would lead to an end of the country’s eight-month garbage crisis.
On Saturday, dozens of lorries started carrying rubbish to the Naameh landfill just south of the city – one off three landfills opened as part of a temporary solution announced by the government a week ago.
The government said that Naameh, the country’s main landfill, will open again for just two months. The crisis began in July, when the landfill was scheduled to close with no realistic alternatives.
Naameh area residents said the dump was over capacity and began blocking the roads to prevent garbage trucks from reaching it.
Despite anger by residents, there were no protests against the reopening of the landfill on Saturday.
In the north Beirut suburb of Jdaideh, home to one of the largest trash piles, a bulldozer loaded thousands of trash bags into trucks.
Fadwa Saad had to put a mask to avoid the smell of the trash that could be seen from her balcony.
“We are coughing, we have allergies and there are mosquitoes and flies in our homes,” she said. “They say they are removing trash. We hope that they really remove it, not only do it for one day and leave the rest.”
As garbage began piling up in Beirut last year, protesters formed the “You Stink” movement, demanding sweeping reform in Lebanon’s government – blamed for the mismanagement and neglect that led to the trash buildup and failure to act against it.
Since the peaks of the protest in the summer, authorities managed to blunt the public anger by ensuring that the streets of Beirut were kept relatively garbage-free. However, the trash was instead pushed to the city’s periphery, where it piled up along roadsides and the banks of the Beirut River.
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