Lebanon isn鈥檛 without its share of problems. No elected government. Over a million Syrian refugees. ISIS tickling the border. And a massive trash crisis. Shadia Khater may not be able to do much about the first three of these, but she鈥檚 doing her best to help solve the fourth, and change the way people in Lebanon think of their trash.
I met her inside what used to be an indoor basketball court, stacked now with 10-foot-high mounds of trash 鈥� metal, glass, paper and various types of plastic 鈥� surrounded by trucks dumping, workers sorting, compacters compacting. And for Khater, it鈥檚 almost heaven. 鈥淸It] make[s] me feel happy,鈥� she says.
鈥淚t鈥� is the new recycling facility for the Beirut suburb of Beit el Shaar, and Khater, who runs a plumbing and HVAC contracting company, is its founder. Household recycling had been almost unheard of in Lebanon until the past year. Khater is a zealous advocate of the practice, but it鈥檚 only really begun to take hold here due to a situation that has spun out of control.
Almost a year ago, the dump for about 3 million people in and around Beirut closed its gates. 鈥淭he way they were dumping the waste there was not according to good practices,鈥� says Ziad Abichaker, head of a Lebanese NGO called Cedar Environmental. 鈥淭here was lots of odors emanating, a lot of complaint from local residents. Methane gas generation was not being managed well. So people were really getting sick from these toxic gases.鈥�
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