This short report targets the Lebanese Community regardless of their background. A simple kind worded cast of argument, appealing to the sense of belonging and sense of duty.
Nothing is unrevealed with the Lebanese Waste Problem. It is as obvious as waste piling on our streets. Since the closing of the Naameh landfill in July 2015, landfilling was replaced by “street-filling”, or “any-empty-location” filling for that matter. Herein, the “Tabula Raza” or blank mind-slate of the Lebanese community started to fill with their empirical senses - mainly sight and smell - of the wasted years of bad waste management. Now the problem is here. Needless to indulge ourselves with how did the problem come by and start pointing fingers, rather let us see if there is a solution, how could we take part of it, and how does HJM group participate in making theoretical approaches possible.
What are the waste treatment methods?
We just mentioned that most of the waste in Lebanon is treated by landfilling. In fact, we believe there are three main classes in the hierarchy of waste management. These are as follows:
- Reduce/avoid and reuse waste
- Treat the waste
- Dispose of the waste
We will start from the bottom. The last class includes mainly the “sanitary landfill” that is supposed to be happening in Lebanon. Sanitary, to emphasize on environmentally sound disposal. Without the mumbling of nonsensical technicalities, we basically dig a big ditch and fill it with untreated waste after fine tuning a bunch of control measures, which makes it environmentally harmless. This is obviously the simplest method.
The middle class, the treatment of waste, is of interest here and will be detailed next. In waste treatment, the three most popular methods are:
1) In vessel composting (IVC): Putting organic matter (carbon) in a vessel and allowing the microbial organisms or “bacteria” to degrade it into useful end-product. Although it sounds very messy, it really is not. The whole thing happens in a closed vessel, producing mainly compost (a fertilizer) if processed with the presence of oxygen.
2) Anaerobic digestion (AD): This method is very similar to IVC but happens with the absence of oxygen and leads to the formation of biogas 60 – 70% and the rest is biomass. Biogas could be used to generate electricity. Both AD and IVC treats only organic matter, which is the sludge formed from food, cooking oil, plantations and household kind of waste.
3) Incineration: This is quite simple actually. We put all the waste in a big “chamber” and we burn them, with electricity as the end-product. Unfortunately, there is a myth agreed upon by the society that “incineration causes cancer”. Or at least, with all the flue gases coming out from burning the waste it should go somewhere! Right? To the atmosphere, to be inhaled by the people? Controversial to this misconception is 800 incinerators operating world-wide, 400 of them constructed in Europe. This tells us something. Beside maintaining natural resources, the climate, and public health, the incinerator can deal with all kind of Municipal Solid Wastes (MSW) which is house-hold lump of waste, hazardous waste, and sludge from industrial wastewater. This makes incineration perfect method to get rid of large quantities of existing wastes.
Finally, waste management (upper class of the hierarchy) is simply avoiding piling up the waste by organizing a cycle of segregation (separation of waste between plastic, glass, …, etc.), recycling, and treatment. Accordingly, this category is integrated with class 2 which appears at the last stage of the cycle. Waste management is ultimately the best scenario as it avoids the problem of stacking the waste to start with, and requires small capacities for the waste treatment facilities.
“Waste becomes merely another commodity or a raw material that goes through a cycle to produce valuable products”.
This simply summarizes the waste treatment classes and methods. What about the Lebanese case?
Waste in Lebanon
In 2014, a German Corporation “Deutshe Zusammenarbeit” published a study on solid waste management showing that 48% of the municipal waste is landfilled, almost 30% are openly dumped. This study was done before the closing of the Naameh landfill which encompassed 85% of the country’s landfill. With 1.05 kg of waste produced per person per day culminating to 2 million tonnes, and growth waste generation estimated around 25000 tons per year (1.7% increase), things are not looking well. To top on that, the Lebanese population is estimated to increase from 6 million to 7 million in 30 years, without accounting for the flux of refugee culminating to this number. With this little estimated data, it is ever clear that we are heading towards a dark “wasted” future.
Looking back on what we just introduced, class 1 helps avoiding waste while class 2 is regarded with treating existing waste. Given the Lebanese situation, with huge amount of dumped waste all over the country, the only way for a sustainable waste solution is to implement both classes of waste management.
First, we start enacting a well-designed waste management approach, stimulated by in-house segregation of waste, recycling and treatment. This might require number of governmental decrees and parties working together to set stones for legislative context. However, the main element to ensuring successful implementation is the commitment of the society. By the time a proper well-functioning management system takes place, with the tint needed to spread awareness and commitment, class 2 methods of waste treatment should be implemented. This helps eliminating existing waste, and the waste produced during the management development phase. These waste treatment plants will continue to be useful, as the end side of the waste management cycle is possibly a treatment facility.
In short, to mitigate and prevent the repetition of the mistakes, the main momentum lies at the hands of the people. Yes, treatment facilities should be encouraged by governmental or private sectors, but for the waste management cycle to happen, all the Lebanese community should bear a sense of duty. It is very easy to point fingers higher up the ranks, blame the officials, and protest the current situation. This is actually what we have been doing for a decade now: objecting, disapproving, complaining, and dumping waste as far as possible from where we live. However, it is worth noting that the government have on-going projects since 1999 to minimise the damage of waste on the society. Obviously, the whole thing fell apart, but we all need to collaborate.
As Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Let us work together for unity and love”, love of this country. We should all be the change we wish to see in this country.
How can HJM help?
With expertise in waste management solutions, HJM can help in all three classes of the waste management cycle. Whether it’s a municipality, a town, or even a governorate we can tailor a solution that best fits the requirements of the clients.
Provided the range of treatment facilities introduced above, what is the best way to go? HJM group developed a model to optimize the solution for waste treatment. Effectively, for every scenario (population involved, type of waste, land available …etc.) one treatment facility optimizes the solution.
What does that mean? It is like washing the laundry. Whether we are washing coloured clothes, whether its wool, silk, … there is an optimum method to get the best results. The waste management model designed by HJM can take into consideration many restrictions. This includes:
- Capital cost (How much money you would like to invest)
- Operating cost (How much can you pay per month)
- Breakeven time (How long do you want to wait until your investment is covered)
- Net present value (How much return you want on the investment)
- Land size
- Number of labour… and many more
Let’s assume a municipality wants to build a treatment facility. We provide a full waste management package, working close with both the executives and the community involved.
The package of services includes:
- Waste diary: We collect waste samples from the community under study to get an average of the waste composition. In fact, most of the plants being sold are standardized to European waste composition, which is quite different than ours. Understanding the average composition of the waste being treated is crucial for an optimized design. It is very much like using pesticides or insecticides which are tailored to specific species in each country.
- Optimized treatment: HJM’s model can directly provide the treatment method with the best features the client is seeking. If the municipality have a small budget we can provide the treatment with the minimum capital investment. Other features can include the treatment facility which maximizes the number of labours, if the point is to provide maximum job opportunities in a town. Whatever the goal is or the restriction, we can guide towards the best solution.
- Personal and operator training: During the construction, commissioning and plant start-up, HJM group will assist local operators to run the plant, which is excellent for providing job opportunities.
- Awareness campaign - HJM group will conduct a full awareness campaign with local conferences, seminars, and workshops to explain for the involved community their responsibilities, how to segregate waste, and what is the role they need to play.
- Waste Management cycle - We also provide a full study for the waste management cycle, including a schedule for waste collection, number of trucks needed and trucks capacity, even the most efficient road map for collection.
This is how much we can help. We are doing our part, it is time for the rest of you to do yours. Together we can bring some green back into our country, or at least get the waste away from our street.
Let’s invest in our community, our environment, our health and the health of our children. Let’s invest in transformation!