The city of Amman in Jordan where I live is experiencing a deteriorating level of municipal services, most notably in garbage collection and public space cleaning. The hills of the city are heaped with trash, and the problem extends to other towns and across the countryside. Even Jordan’s natural jewels are tarnished.
Citizens of the United Arab Emirates receive free healthcare and education, and enjoy subsidized water, electricity and fuel. Men can claim free land and no-interest building loans; couples get cash towards their wedding expenses. And next January, lucky residents in two Abu Dhabi neighborhoods will get high-tech trash bins.
Nineteen-year-old Boyan Slat plans to clean the ocean, whereas most teenagers can’t even tidy their rooms. The aerospace engineering student devised a method to siphon off plastic garbage patches bulging in our seas.
Random dumping and burning of plastic garbage, which constitutes a fifth of the Kingdom’s solid waste, are negatively affecting the environment and public health, said a Jordanian official.
The barbershop tradition in Turkey is far more vibrant than the Hair Cutteries of America. In Turkey, men gather for their weekly shave and catch up on the politics du jour while drinking strong muddy coffee often laced with cardamom. The barber is naturally a key figure in this street culture, so when he takes […]
“This is not a romance story,” Daniella told me during a recent interview. I met the petite woman at her home on Lamu Island in northern Kenya to speak with her husband, Ali Lamu, whose name is synonymous with a brand of upcycled dhow sails or tangas that are now distributed throughout the world. Daniella […]
Coffee can have a secret life beyond your kitchen filter or your Turkish coffee pot. From compost to creative solutions. Give new life to the mountains of used grinds we toss out every week. Your favorite bean just became even better! 1. Keep your garden cat-free The jury’s still out on this: supposedly grounds spread around […]
Like our popular guide on reusing air conditioner water, old tea bags ? … that’s easy. As an avid tea drinker, I was intrigued when I stumbled upon a variety of sources that promoted the eco-friendly use of tea bags, outside the teacup. Arthur W. Pinero, an Englishman, of course, said, “Where there’s tea, there’s […]
Recyclable plastics or wastes for the dump? The choice is ours. Plastic items that usually get discarded and wind up being buried in landfills or washed out to sea are serious issues brought up during annual events like Earth Day. The seriousness of large amounts of plastic debris in the worlds seas and oceans have raised […]
Lebanese don’t usually need an excuse to party but they might need an incentive to recycle. Albeit one of the only countries at the COP18 climate change negotiations to commit to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, Lebanon has a shoddy recycling record – mostly because it lacks the necessary infrastructure. Which is why the NGO […]
Tires, plastics, and other types of solid waste will soon be converted into energy and other products at a new Israel mega recycling plant. Photo: Haaretz/Michal Fattal Israel’s garbage dumps and landfills are often referred to as large, unsightly “garbage mountains” such as the Hiriya garbage mound near Tel Aviv. With the Hiriya site now […]
Stock image of trash dump, Shutterstock. Gaza produces roughly 1,000 pounds of waste every day and until now most of it has gone untreated. But a new recycling plant situated very close to the border with Egypt has recently opened to manage some of this waste, which is otherwise scattered throughout farmlands or in the […]
You can get vending machines for the strangest things in the Arab Gulf – even for gold bars. But thinking in a greener direction, the United Arab Emirates is the second country in the world to adopt light bulb and used battery recycling machines to the public. Five reverse vending machines are being set up […]
Could it be a world-changer? A cheap solution to help African kids get to schools and clinics? Israel’s Izhar Gafni (who we interviewed here) had an outlandish idea to create a durable cardboard bike from scratch with raw materials sum totalling about $9. Add in some labor costs and you can get a pretty cheap […]
PLUG-In Hebron is a dynamic new urban renewal project for the conflict-shorn West Bank city. Following years of what the designers call “reciprocal violence,” the Israeli military split Hebron into two separate zones. The latter, H2, which is under Israeli jurisdiction, contains the old city. Which means that the Palestinians have been isolated from an […]