Environment

#BalaPlastic with Greenpeace, Recycle Lebanon, Mashrou’ Leila and Ehdeniyat!


Ever since the 2015 garbage crisis, we all became aware of just how bad the situation in Lebanon was. Drowning in untreated garbage, both in the streets and the sea. The #BalaPlastic movement is hoping to fight the problem at its root, given how hopeless it is to expect the government and whoever they award contracts to care about the environmental cost of their profits, or its adverse effects on our health.

#BalaPlastic’s aim is to convince people to use less single-use plastic products. These include things like water bottles, cups, cutlery, straws and a lot of other things we might use to avoid having to do the dishes. Every bottle, every fork (or spork!) and every plate you throw in a bin will inevitably end up in haphazard landfills, or floating in the beaches you guys Instagram all season.

Less than 10% of our garbage actually gets recycled, and that isn’t gonna change if we don’t do something about it ourselves, both on an individual basis and as groups. Just imagine, every single day, 700 tons of plastic is thrown out in Lebanon… Every, single, day.

What’s Being Done In the Next Two Weeks

It’s not like a problem without an easy, existing solution. There are widely available alternatives that are either multi-use, or simply recyclable.

Greenpeace Rainbow Warrior

Greenpeace’s ship Rainbow Warrior is going around the Mediterranean Sea, to countries like Greece, Italy and Spain. Its mission is to raise awareness on single use plastic, along with a report on its disastrous effects on the sea we all share. The report showed abysmal status of plastic in our Mediterranean… You can find the report here.


The Lebanon Leg

In Lebanon, Greenpeace launched the #BalaPlastic Movement. They teamed up with Recycle Lebanon to organize a beach clean-up event and an awareness day against single use plastic. It’s happening this Saturday, on August 5, 2017 at the Raouche Dalieh. The plan is to make this the biggest ever beach clean up in Lebanon, with lots of NGOs, groups and individuals participating in cleaning up the beach and sorting out the plastic. RSVP Here!

Mashrou’ Leila’s Ehdeniyat Concert


Mashrou’ Leila expressed their support for this initiative, and having been on the Rainbow Warrior themselves before, it struck close to home, literally. The idea is to use the plastic gathered on Saturday to create an awesome art installation designed by Di-Lab at the Mashrou’ Leila concert in Ehdeniyat on August 12th (RSVP here)!

I’m excited to be there this Saturday for the beach clean up, and the next Saturday in my beloved hometown of Ehden for Mashrou’ Leila’s special homecoming show after their tour!

The beach clean is organised by our friends at Recycle Lebanon, funded by The Mercy Corps. Al Midan NGO who work on environmental issues in Lebanon, has partnered up with the public sector and local communities. They will be providing a big part of the sorted plastic for the art installation!

Oh, and you get 50% off your Careem ride to the cleanup!


Lebanon Will Have 3 Wind Farms by 2020



Finally, for the first time in history, and many years too late, the Lebanese government will buy energy from the private sector which will generate it from a renewable source: wind.

This week, the cabinet gave three companies licenses to build wind farms in Lebanon’s Akkar region.

The wind farms are expected to generate around 200MW of power, enough for 200,000 households in Lebanon.

The law which OKs buying electricity from the private sector dates back to 2002, and was updated in 2010. Now, in 2017, projects have finally been sanctioned, 15 years after the first law was passed.

This is great news, especially with talk about billions of your dollars being spent on temporary, environmentally-unfriendly power ships. This at a time the government is trying to hike taxes across the board… It’s unacceptable that billions of dollars be spent on a temporary fix for the electricity, when more permanent, and more importantly, sustainable options can happen.

The government should loosen up laws on who can generate electricity in Lebanon. Especially on renewable energy. I don’t get how people are allowed to run diesel power generators in neighborhoods for decades now, but it takes so long to give a permit and allow production of clean power to help close the massive power gap in this tiny country.

Wind farms, solar farms, hydroelectric dams that don’t destroy entire ecosystems and heritage sites like the Janna Dam disaster, are all viable options, that will cost the taxpayer less, and slow down the butchering of our garbage-drenched, toxically-polluted environment.

Then again, the politicians won’t make as much money from no “moteurs” and dirty sources of energy, so, we need to keep an eye out and pressure up to move towards the private sector and private citizens being allowed to generate clean energy.

Anyway, the companies have 18 months to do an environmental impact assessment, and then another 18 months to complete construction of the wind farms. So, in 2020, we should have 3 wind farms in Akkar, generating 200MW of power.

The Grand Factory: Gamifying Recycling at a Beirut Club



The Grand Factory family really is like family to me. I’m pretty sure I see them more often than my actual family.

Many people think it’s just a place to club, dance, get drunk and celebrate stuff. It’s a lot more than that though, and whenever I try to raise the issue of how powerful an impact places like TGF can have on Lebanon’s social and economic dire situation, the naysayers do nothing but criticize and demean our lifestyle choices which don’t include arguilehs and discriminating against others based on gender, sect, race, sexual preference and other issues that sadly many of Lebanon’s youth are still not over.

The most recent initiative by The Grand Factory is in partnership with an amazing NGO which I used to volunteer with back in my scouts days: Arcenciel.

The video below illustrates the idea beautifully, but in short, it’s trying to have a positive impact on Lebanese people’s alleged unwillingness to sort garbage to recycle it.

We keep hearing our politicians dismiss garbage sorting from the source as mythical and impossible. That’s because they would prefer a much worse solution so they can get contracts to line their pockets, while filling our landfills and doing nothing to stop the environmental calamity plaguing our country since 2015.

TGF figured out a way to make sorting fun, and made special vintage-video-game-like bins for plastic cups they serve alcohol in. The bins have sensors in them, and digital counters that display how many people have sorted their cups so far each night. When the counter reaches the desired target number, a surprise happens (like free pizza for everyone there!).

This is awesome, and thousands of cups are being sorted to go get recycled at Arcenciel each week. However, when I’m at TGF, I sometimes notice some clubbers aren’t even aware of this initiative, and just leave their cups on tables, or worse, throw them on the floor. So, please, this week when you’re at The Grand Factory, make sure you sort your plastic cups, and help Arcencial in their noble mission.

Change starts with each one of us. Whining that nothing will ever change doesn’t help. Waiting for the government to do what’s right will never help. Start with sorting when you club, maybe next where you live, study and work. We cannot keep drowning in garbage waiting for ministers to cut deals.

Have a blast this weekend everyone ❤

Mashrou’ Leila Sing for the Sun on Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior

It was barely a week after my post about why I love Mashrou’ Leila and the profound impact I feel they’re having on Lebanon and the region with the causes they champion and their unique way of delivering those messages.

During that time, the boys had sailed off for four days on Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior, to write and perform the song whose video I embedded at the top of this post.

For those of you who don’t know, I was a Greenpeace activist for many years in Beirut. Deep down, despite my preoccupation with mainly civil and social issues, I am a conservationist at heart, one that tries not to let the mounting environmental dangers and us getting closer to (or passing!) the point of no return bring me down. When it comes to keeping our planet habitable, I think it’s far more important we do that before or at least while embarking on colonizing other planets, which seems to be the talk of the town the past year.

So, I was ecstatic when I heard about this project, and couldn’t wait to hear what the band and the Greenpeace activists come up with. The song aims to highlight the importance and potential of solar power, and they did not disappoint!

The saddest part for me about this track, is how the witty word choice in the song kind of gets lost in translation, such as “Illi sar, mish maseer” which is an awesome way of saying it’s not too late, and what’s past isn’t necessarily our destiny.

Otherwise, I loved the video and the song and I’m so glad the boys took a few days off their hectic touring schedule to do this. We often get so caught up with our daily struggles and problems, that we forget how close we are coming to making this beautiful blue rock almost uninhabitable for us and other animals and plants that call it home. No cause is more important that the environmental one, because at the end of the day, it’s not just about an election or a law on a paper, it’s about the survival of our species and the planet we pass down to our kids and their kids.

To wrap things up and end on a more positive note in the usually gloom and doom world of environmental policy, this year, renewable energy sources have finally overtaken coal as a source of energy. There might be hope for us yet! And what better soundtrack to that struggle for survival than a good old Mashrou’ Leila track?!

Don’t forget to sign up, support and volunteer with Greenpeace! ❤