With limited resources and few alternatives for sanitary disposal of waste, there has been an increase in uncontrolled dumping of garbage across Lebanon. The health and environmental impacts of this are severe: increased vectors spreading diseases and pollution of waterways with leachate and fecal contamination from waste.
.ACTED has responded to the challenges of the waste crisis by both empowering the local community through trainings on vermicomposting and waste sorting and rehabilitating the neighborhood to ensure the safety of the community.
In response to the growing challenges of mounting waste and a lack of public services, ACTED has provided the Tartej community with 50 bins, soil and earthworms and trained the residents on vermicomposting; the process of using earthworms to transform organic waste into a valuable soil amendment, which ultimately decreases the volume of waste disposed in the landfill. Furthermore, ACTED worked to ensure that the community possessed the tools for sustainable waste management by providing trainings on solid waste management and effective communication strategies. 30 volunteers from Al Makased organization joined ACTED for a full day workshop to become advocates for better solid waste management practices in their neighborhood. The workshop tackled the technical components of solid waste management and how to communicate with their peers and wider community about solid waste.
After the uncontrolled dumping of solid waste on a property in a Cite Sportive led to an increase of exposure to health incidents for the surrounding families, ACTED, in coordination with the municipality, removed the waste and constructed a fence to prohibit the community from dumping at the site. ACTED also conducted mass community awareness sessions, highlighting the health risks of the open dumping and encouraged families to take their waste to the local communal bins. In the area of Tartej, a rural village in Keserwan, ACTED hosted a community day to launch the opening of a playground constructed from recyclable materials, promoting recycling and reusing of wastes and motivating and encouraging the residents to sort their wastes at a household level. One beneficiary, Linda, said following the project, “We would like to thank ACTED for helping and supporting us on a household level and [for] the Solid waste removal because it had a very big impact on the surround[ing] families.”
