At least 60 people were killed by an avalanche of debris in an Ethiopian landfill on Saturday night. Mountains of trash at Koshee Garbage Landfill near Addis Ababa collapsed in a massive landslide, destroying the makeshift shanties that lined its slopes and killing scavengers who earn a living sorting trash for resale. One resident told the Associated Press that around 150 people were on site during the collapse. Dozens are still missing.

Addis Ababa city spokeswoman Dagmawit Moges said most of the dead were women and children.

For half a century, this landfill was the repository for the capital city’s garbage, accepting an estimated annual volume of 300,000 tons in recent years. Koshe, which means “dirty” in the local Amharic language, has experienced smaller collapses resulting in several fatalities, but nothing on this scale of this latest accident.Addis Ababa Mayor Diriba Kuma said 37 people had been rescued and received medical treatment, two with serious injuries.

The landside had been closed for several years, but dumping had resumed in recent months after farmers near the site of a proposed replacement landfill objected to dumping in their area. “NIMBY” (not in my backyard) pushback has also proven effective in Lebanon’s waste wars, with aggressive opposition to the Naameh dump site in the mountains southeast of Beirut and the open-sea dumpsite formerly active in Sidon.

Since 2010, city officials have warned that the landfill was over capacity, expansion is constrained by nearby neighborhood development. In 2013, the city began construction on a $120 MIL waste-to-energy facility that will convert garbage into clean energy. It will become Africa’s first waste-to-energy plant when completed, generating 50 megawatts of electricity each year.

An estimated 500 waste-pickers work at the landfill, sorting through the debris to make a living, much like the workers in Cairo’s sprawling “garbage city”. Others choose to live on the site as landfill housing, made of mud and sticks, is relatively inexpensive to rent.

“In the long run, we will conduct a resettling program to relocate people who live in and around the landfill,” the Addis Ababa mayor said. Too late for the victims of the landslide.

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According to a statement released by the Media Office, the new organization will working in partnership “with hotels and restaurants, food-manufacturing companies and supermarkets and introduce a process of preserving, storing and packaging the food, with the goal to optimize usage and achieve zero waste.” Sheikh Mohammed’s wife, Sheikha Hind bint Maktoum, will chair its board of trustees.

The action plan is straightforward:

• Dubai Municipality will give operational support – collecting, packaging, storing and distributing the food.

• Trained volunteers will support activities at all Food Bank locations. They will also collect surplus food from the appointed authorities, and distribute it to those in need, in and outside the UAE.

• The Food Bank will also recycle the remnants of inedible food for re-use as nonconsumable products, as example, for agricultural fertilizer and as feedstock for scientific research.

• Food Bank partners and participants will adhere to “an integrated mechanism for food preservation”, based on international food safety guidelines and best practices.

• The operation will start in Dubai and then expand to underdeveloped communities beyond the UAE.

“The Year of Giving provides a golden opportunity for UAE citizens and institutions to maximise their philanthropic potential by launching humanitarian initiatives. We chose ‘food’ as our first initiative as it is one of the most basic human needs,” Sheikh Mohammed explained. “Through the UAE Food Bank, we aim to instill the value of giving deep in the hearts of our people.”

“We are also inspired by the boundless generosity of UAE President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan,” he added, “especially during the month of Ramadan, when he provides meals to millions of underprivileged people daily. The UAE Food Bank seeks to immortalize these values in future generations by engaging community-based volunteers and organisations so that the spirit of philanthropy spreads beyond the borders of the UAE as the Year of Giving unfolds.”

Dubai’s hospitality industry is robust, with a clear focus on delivering top-class eating experiences. According to calculations by TOPHOTELPROJECTS, which tracks worldwide first-class and luxury hotel construction projects, Dubai’s hotel rooms will reach more than 100,000 by 2020, when the emirate hosts the World Expo. Food waste on a grand scale is inevitable, now estimated to cost the emirate over USD $3.5 billion each year.

Last June, Ivano Ianelli, CEO of Dubai Carbon, reported that “an average person in Europe generates around 1.2kg of waste a day, which is less than half the per capita waste generation of 2.7kg per day in the UAE. This doubles to 5.4kg a day during Ramadan in the UAE. Clearly this is something that needs to be addressed.”

The UAE has previously tackled waste caused by public phobia about ‘sell-by” dates, and in 2012 initiated a program to encourage mall operators to segregate organic waste from general trash thereby minimizing the material slated for landfills and streamlining municipal waste management. But the emirate remains alongside Bahrain, Qatar, and Kuwait when it comes to unecessary food waste. The Food Bank holds potential to place the emirate as a regional and world leader in creative solutions to both food poverty and waste control.

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Want a peek into a dystopian future? This is an update on the garbage crisis in Lebanon, which is largely attributed to a corrupted political system, but it’s also a cautionary tale about uncontrolled consumerism and environmental arrogance that could happen in nearly every free market zip code.

Since the nation’s largest landfill closed in July, Lebanon has been drowning in its own garbage. The waste crisis escalated last weekend when angry demonstrators tried to storm the parliament in Beirut. Riot police responded with tear gas and water cannon, and according to some reports, rubber bullets and live ammunition. An unspecified number of demonstrators and more than 35 Internal Security Forces (ISF) members were wounded, according to an ISF online statement.

The Naameh dump site in the mountains southeast of Beirut (shown above) had been the endpoint for waste generated by half of Lebanon’s four million people. This summer,  when authorities failed to find an alternate landfill, Naameh residents blocked trucks from dropping new garbage, which triggered a waste collection shutdown across wider Beirut. So began a domino effect that resulted in the death of one Beirut protester, and as yet undefined environmental fallout.

Garbage dropped near the Port of Beirut (shown above) triggered a mid-August work stoppage over mounting health and safety concerns. “We will not accept our port becoming the capital’s dumping ground. The health of all who enter the port is at risk, workers, visitors and customers.” Bchara Asmar, president of the Union of Beirut port employees, told ITF Global. He added that the Lebanese government has not provided a viable long-term waste management solution; forcing municipalities to resort to temporary remedies.

The situation has prompted protests across Beirut, but also grassroot solutions. Local priests are calling for reduced pollution, citing Pope Francis’ recent criticism of our “throwaway culture”. The mayor of northern town Roumieh organized volunteers and city employees to collect recyclables and biodegradable waste (such as food scraps) on a regular schedule. Recyclables with commercial value will be sold to help underwrite the initiative.

Beirut business owner and environmental engineer Ziad Abichaker told the Wall Street Journal, “I think it is a golden opportunity now to start saying to people that you need a paradigm shift. You need to stop looking at waste as a problem and start looking at it as a resource.”

These efforts – quietly pursued before the protests – are garnering increased attention by a public desperate to dig out of the stinking debris. (Reports state some 20 tons of rubbish have been dumped in the capital’s streets).

Lebanon has been without a president for 15 months.  Its government is viewed as paralyzed and ineffective, a reputation underscored when Environment Minister Mohammed el-Mashnouq posted a statement saying his office was “working silently” to resolve what he called “a tragic situation”.

Reduce, reuse, recycle. Those actions won’t fix a broken bureaucracy, but will lessen the pain when civil services collapse.

The post Lebanon’s drowning in its own waste! appeared first on Green Prophet.

A pair of gymnasts propels cans into an orange recycling bin with perfect synchronicity. A tennis serve Roger Federer would be proud of whacks a bottle into another.  Folks toss milk cartons off a rooftop and bridge for more perfect drops into a cheery recycling can.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/R552n3w8-B4[/youtube]

See a skateboarder jump-kick a bottle into another bin; and a half court shot sends a detergent bottle though a basketball net into its final resting place. The high-energy antics instantly make recycling cool.

The Tamir recycling corporation launched the online campaign to raise public awareness about recycling.  The company collects packaging waste from all of Israel; last year they produced a clever animated video to encourage children to recycle. Previously, they had launched a “superhero” television campaign to increase public awareness about recycling packaging waste.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/fR5laRDgNko[/youtube]

Israel has had a Packaging Law in effect since January 2011 that requires manufacturers and importers to take fiscal responsibility for all the packaging materials they bring into the market. Orange bins placed on streets by local authorities around the country enable private citizens to properly dispose of various types of packaging waste.

According to a statistic released last summer by the Israel Union for Environmental Defense and Migal, a Galilee research institute, over 300,000 Israeli households now separate dry and wet waste, representing a 400 percent increase in two years.

Tamir’s message is clear: no matter how you choose to deposit your waste, recycling is the future. Now if only Israel’s neighbors would pick up on that message.

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Everywhere you go in this otherwise beautiful Mediterranean country, and I really do mean just about anywhere, you are bound to come across big piles of trash. In the cities, on train tracks, on the middle of a street, on the beach.

After a while the sight of so much plastic, paper, cans, glass, jars, luggage, furniture, clothing and other waste in overflowing trash cans or informal dump sites becomes so distressing, it’s hard not to push it out of one’s mind. This is my experience, at least.

SelfiPoubella, which joined Facebook on May 16, 2014, less than 10 days ago at time of writing, aims to keep people from ignoring the problem.

The group encourages residents to take a selfie of themselves standing in front of a big trash heap somewhere in the country and then share it on Facebook and Twitter. By using the hashtags #SelfiePoubella (which means Trash Selfie) and the name of the city, town or village in which the photograph was taken, the photos are easy to search.

Related: Another day in Tunisia chasing balls through trash

Amazingly, the SelfiPoubella page already has nearly 12,000 likes and dozens of people are posting images of themselves – boldly exposing themselves for a cause they believe will effect change.

“Show the true face of our streets and the pollution of the environment,” the group urges on their Facebook page. 

Tunisia is making moves to address the trash problem, which is no easy feat. In order to improve waste management, its necessary to have recycling services and a market for recycled goods, along with sophisticated methods of collecting, sorting and distributing waste to extract its remaining value.

In the MENA region, the trash problem is by no means limited to Tunisia. I have first hand experience of trash seeping into every facet of life in Morocco and Egypt, and Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey all battle with waste management as well.

The wealthier Gulf countries have a somewhat better system for sorting waste after dedicating a great deal of time and resources to the problem, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t seen litter in far-flung spaces outside of Dubai, Abu Dhabi and the UAE’s west coast.

The MENA region produces on average 1.1 kilogram of waste per person per day, according to the World Bank, and collectively contributes six percent to the global trash production of 1.3 billion tons every year.

By 2025, that number will reach 2.2 billion tons. That is 2.2 billion tons of trash that has become, because of the addition of synthetic materials designed to make stuff last, more or less incompatible with the Earth from whence it came.

We’re drowning in trash. Our oceans are suffering. Camels are suffering. Birds and other wildlife are suffering. And people are suffering too. So if you live in Tunisia and want to help make the trash issue more tangible, take a selfie, and then share it with the world.

All images via SelfiPoubella

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The snapshot below was taken at the Dead Sea.

It’s not simply a cosmetic catastrophe: the garbage stinks and attracts vermin and flies and armies of feral cats. There’s potential for much more dangerous health impacts.

Clean-up campaigns are floated like half-filled balloons.  The government commissions research, but action diminishes once the press conferences are over. The problem is boundless, even the poshest villas are ringed with garbage.

While the Greater Amman Municipality struggles to find a workable action plan, individuals are taking action, hatching schemes instead of lobbing complaints.

Facebook serves as a conduit to coordinate the like-minded. Stop Dumping on Jordan was established last year: its mission is “to look for solutions to Jordan’s chronic litter problem”. Followers are urged to post their most egregious litter photos and suggestions for positive action.

They recently broadcast a recycling initiative by Amman’s Hakawati Book Store whereby customers earn credit on their loyalty cards when they decline a bag or purchase a reusable cloth bag.  The shop also makes unique “bags” from empty cereal boxes (shown below).

Karen and Mohammed Asfour have written three children’s books starring Azeeza, the anti-litter goat, who tackles litter issues and offers suggestions and solutions that , hopefully, young readers will adopt.  Like all celebrities, Azeeza has her own Facebook page.

Garbage Free Amman is another FB page which organizes followers for periodic community clean-ups.  They post calls for weekly trash-clearings, inviting followers to spend two hours picking up garbage in their immediate area. They state, “To become effective, all of Amman should do it at once. We have to show the difference.”

And there’s the mostly-Arabic language page, Balash Kees, which focuses on plastic bag pollution. Balash Kees, which kicked off last year in cooperation with Amman’s UNESCO office, is a polished public relations effort that  uses powerful imagery to incite action.  The lead photo to this story, entitled Plastic Suicide, was submitted by follower Sabri Hakin.

People are becoming more aware of the problem, if only at a snail’s pace. It’s clear that Jordanians need to revise their views on littering before any real change can occur. As part of a university project, student Liana Rashdan interviewed Amman’s orange-suited day laborers who toil along roadsides with simple brooms and buckets.  The clip gives good insight into the local attitude towards trash:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/UNlwu2PfN_k[/youtube]

Sure, Jordan is broke, but community clean-up is not an expensive initiative.  Existing waste collection systems need to be better managed and adhere to strict collection schedules.  Municipalities need to implement and enforce anti-littering laws, and rev up recycling. Ideally, the government will mobilize to stop pollution at it’s source: ban free-issue of non-biodegradable plastic bags.

We may be years away from Abu Dhabi’s hi-tech trash bins, but there’s a growing mob of Jordanians who are working to change the kingdom’s trashy habits.

Featured image by Sabri Hakin; all others from Stop Dumping on Jordan

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The bins are actually owned by the municipality’s waste contractors, who will introduce the new technology in two pilot areas.  The challenge will be getting everyone to place the trash inside the “intelligent” garbage cans.

Each bin is electronically chipped with its geographic and technical details.  Garbage trucks will be fitted with a device that can read the bin data, and link to a central monitoring station which records collection times and alerts management when the units need washing.  Compared to the electronic monitoring of private communications recently exposed in the USA, this data collection is minor; but unlike the US surveillance, this one the public welcomes.

The monitoring station can quickly determine the last pick-up and check if collections were missed, according to Dr. Salem Al Ka’abi, acting general manager, Center of Waste Management.

The pilot is aimed at squashing persistent complaints about inconsistent pick-up (residents making a stink about uncollected trash will receive quicker municipal attention), and better serving the emirate’s overarching waste-to-energy ambitions.

Green Prophet recently reported on Abu Dhabi’s plans for an $850 million incinerator plant which will convert municipal trash into green fuel. Trash collection becomes a critical link in the waste-to-energy chain as the plant must be fed a constant stream of non-recyclable garbage.

Abu Dhabi produces an estimated million metric tons of (non-recyclable) municipal solid waste (MSW) annually, which can produce 100 megawatts of energy, the same amount of power as the world’s largest concentrated solar power (CSP) plant, Shams which also opened in March in Abu Dhabi.

Image of existing Abu Dhabi trash bins from Gulf News

The post Automated High-Tech Bins To Tighten Abu Dhabi Trash Collection appeared first on Green Prophet.

Garbage city and the Zabaleen people, who turn mountains, literally mountains (or buildings) full of organic and inorganic waste into something useful has been something of a fascination for the outside world.

Teams of architects have envisioned a way to turn the teeming waste that accumulates in this corner of the city into an energy-generating powerhouse and a wonderful film was recently made to document how the Zabaleen work to recycle so much trash.

The Zabaleen have suffered since 2009. The pigs were essential to the work of consuming organic waste.

Plus, after the culling, thousands of butchers were left without work, according to VOA news, and there was no way to process the waste generated by Cairo’s 18 million residents.

The pigs were controversial – particularly in a Muslim country – but they were effective, and now there are a still a few pigs quietly doing their good work.

“Tucked behind mountains of trash and a wall of flies is a pen full of pigs – the ultimate in organic waste management – and they are making a small, clandestine comeback,” wrote Elizabeth Arrott.

But not everyone is willing to acknowledge they are there, as if drawing attention to them could provoke health officials to clamp down.

Adel Ragi, who is a member of the Garbage Collector’s Union, told the paper that foreign companies have been brought in to tackle Cairo’s phenomenal waste problem, but they just dump the waste on landfills. This is unhelpful – particularly for organic waste, which produces methane when improperly composted.

Christian farmers are trying to set up a new slaughterhouse in order to process the pigs, but they have experienced a delay from authorities.

A Coptic priest who lives above Garbage City calls the pushback a form of religious intolerance since Muslims don’t eat pork, which is perfectly acceptable among Christians.

:: VOA

Image of pigs near pigsty, Shutterstock

The post Cairo’s Waste-Eating Pigs Make a Quiet Comeback appeared first on Green Prophet.

The theme for this series of photographs is ‘consumption’ and we don’t often think of buildings and city infrastructure as being things we consume, but of course they are.

The functional lifespan may be somewhat longer than a typical take-away meal or cheap item of clothing, but in Dubai, not by very much it would seem.

So the excavated mountainside previously depicted, after a short life as a building, bridge or road, eventually ends up, once again, as a mountain, of sorts.

You can view the site on google earth at 25°10’45.30″N  55°27’22.58″E

Note from the editor: this photograph is part of a series called “Consumption” that seeks to document consumerism’s impact on the environment. From resource extraction and commodity production all the way down the supply chain to retail stores and waste processing facilities, Richard artfully examines what nature has come to mean in a world that depends on buying stuff.

The post Landfill: Where Dubai’s Building Rubble Piles Up appeared first on Green Prophet.

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.

Good morning, Jordan! Glad to see you waking up to your plastic addiction and outrageously dirty dumping disorder. Plastics, widely introduced to world markets in the 1960’s, have been soiling the kingdom’s landscape for half a century in the form of disposable bottles, bags and product packaging. Rising population in an increasingly urban setting helps speed the use (or disuse) of the nasty buggers.

Manufacturing is heavily reliant on plastics for packaging, our mostly imported goods come swaddled in the stuff, and the kingdom is mad for clear wrap (walk out of any grocery store with yards of plastic around your purchases – see what came with my latest run to the market, above). The problem is when you throw it all out – see below.

Environment Ministry Secretary General Ahmad Qatarneh said as much during a one-day conference for school kids on the environmental and health impacts of plastic.

“As the ministry bans the burning and dumping of plastic waste, it encourages the public to reduce the use of plastic, recycle it and dispose of it properly,” said Qatarneh, according to The Jordan Times.

Environment Ministry figures indicate alarming plastic pollution statistics for Jordan:

• Jordan generates 6 million tons of solid waste every year, 20% are plastics

• Each Jordanian generates on average 2.2 pounds of solid waste daily

• Jordanians use an average of 1.5 plastic bags per day – that’s 500 plastic bags each, yearly!

• 3 billion plastic bags are used in the country annually, only 20% find their way to landfills

Qatarneh said the ministry has prepared a draft law for regulating waste management, which includes a plastic waste management plan and a policy for limiting the negative impact of plastic bags.

“We are hopeful that the policies will be adopted on a national level by using the Regulatory Impact Analysis [RIA], which will be applied for the first time in the Arab region,” Qatarneh noted.  An RIA is created before new regulations are introduced to examine potential impact and success potential.

Qatarneh underscored that conventional plastic disposal methods, such as burying, are no longer environmentally or economically feasible, and that limiting plastic production and recycling it to generate energy are examples of the future integrated management plan.

Sounds swell, but why not also jump on the simple three step program proven successful in so many nations?  Ban plastic bags (as our Israeli neighbors have done), implement a recycling culture, and roll-out a public education campaign beginning with our schools.

Littering is a serious problem in Jordan, where trash collection infrastructure is poorly developed and people are nonplussed by tossing trash in public and open spaces.

Plastic bags are one of the most prevalent types of land litter. Plastic debris can clog drainage systems and contribute to flooding.  It kills hapless animals who ingest it.  And even landlocked Jordan is experiencing marine pollution problems as its trash makes its way into the Dead and Red Seas.

It’s action time.

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