This year, Lebanese waste management company Compost Baladi is helping a salmon processing factory to realize any accountant’s dream — turning a liability into an asset. The factory generates mountains of food waste that contain valuable nutrients. This led Aoun to suggest converting yesterday’s waste into tomorrow’s fish feed. “Our plan is to recover the nutrients before they run back into the environment,” he says.
The shrewd conservation of natural resources has become crucial in Lebanon, a country still reeling from a protracted garbage crisis that made world headlines. In 2015, the government closed an enormous landfill facility without providing an effective backup plan. Uncollected trash began piling up in the streets almost immediately, while the open burning of waste spiked by 330% before the year’s end.
Unregulated garbage incineration adds to greenhouse gas levels by emitting carbon, while other airborne pollutants from trash cause lung and cardiac illnesses. A 2017 Human Rights Watch report specifically decried the impact of burning garbage on community health in Lebanon.
Since early 2017, Compost Baladi has offered consultancy services on managing waste to a broad cross-section of Lebanese society — from individual homeowners to municipal councils to private companies, large and small. Compost Baladi tailors its solutions to the specific circumstances of each client, adhering to what Aoun describes as a “low tech, low cost and local approach.” This means that the customer must be able to understand, operate and afford its new waste disposal system, lest the process become unsustainable over time.
Aoun says that Compost Baladi is contacted by more and more local citizens, spooked by the recent garbage debacle into finding a more sustainable, less odorous future. While this augurs well for Compost Baladi — the business is already on track for profitability this year — Aoun warns that engrained social attitudes may still threaten progress. “While we expect the sector to grow, given the history of this country, there’s always a chance that [interest] might plateau after the garbage crisis has eased off.”