5+ Better Alternatives to Recycle in Lebanon

After the short rope of lies for Recycle Beirut finally ran out, and they began their mass-blocking, personal attacks and usual fabrications in search of money, we decided to give those of you using their service alternatives that are more transparent, ethical and don’t attack the communities and people they claim to be serving (for a premium).

Live Love Recycle

I love these guys and this project, because it not only addresses the environmental catastrophe in a non-profit attitude, but also give jobs for the most in-need in Lebanon whether as drivers, or as cooks making sure all the employees are well-fed.

You can download their app and request a pick up twice a month, for free. I use them for my household recyclables and my place of business, and I have been very happy with them.

Check them out here.

Arcenciel

AEC are probably the first to integrate recycling into humanitarian causes in Lebanon. I remember back in school when we used to send them all our plastic bottle caps to help fund wheelchairs for people with disabilities who couldn’t afford them.

I recommend you pool a few households, and work with AEC who I love and admire as an NGO and trust them with doing good with the funds they make from recycling your sorted solid waste.

Check them out here.

L’ecoute

Association L’Ecoute is another NGO doing recycling work in Lebanon, with people with hearing disabilities benefiting from the revenue accumulated by L’ecoute rerouting recyclables to designated plants.

Check them out here.

Ganatch

Ganatch do weekly pickups for your recyclables, or you can drop them off yourself in one of their collection points.

Check them out here.

Khalife

Khalife work in Lebanon’s south, and you can find out more about them here.

Recycle Lebanon

Recycle Lebanon are currently focusing on used cigarette butts, the most polluting of all, even more than single-use plastic. So, if you’re a smoker consider rounding up all your used butts and giving them to Recycle Lebanon instead of them ending up in our sea.

Check them out here.

If you know of more ethical, transparent and non-violent initiatives in Lebanon, both for and non-profit, let me know. Let’s make sure corporations that are in it for the money, and the business of fabricating lies, exploiting vulnerable workers and abusing people’s trust and support stop reaping the rewards of our government’s corruption and ineptitude.

Live Love Recycle: No More Excuses

This morning, the Live Love Recycle app jumped to #1 in productivity on Google Play in Lebanon.

What is it?

Live Love Recycle is a new initiative by my dear friends at Live Love Beirut to help counter the garbage crisis in Lebanon that our government is unwilling and incapable of solving years into the garbage crisis that has drowned our gorgeous seas, mountains and valleys with untreated garbage.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BhXKwXsBgDw/

How you can use it

Using the app, you can request a free pickup from your homes a maximum of twice a month, two bags each. The sorted bags will then be taken to Arc en Ciel to be recycled by one of the bikes you see below!

This is an amazing example of going against the powers that be, to prove that problems have solutions, unlike what the government and its institutions, who did not help at all with this program, try to tell us.

Why this matters

The people driving the electrical bikes are all folks who are under the poverty line in Lebanon, and if someone wants to join the team, they still can, just get in touch with the Live Love team! This means that people who need jobs the most are getting them, and the gathering process produces zero emissions, since the bikes use no fossil fuels.

Apart from the bikers, 20 women have also been hired to cook meals for the teams, making this initiative gender-balanced and maximizing the amount of jobs created for the most vulnerable people in Lebanon.

How to expand

At the moment, the capacity of the Live Love Recycle initiative is around 10 tons of recyclable waste a day, which is not nearly enough to cover the thousands of tons of garbage Beirut produces every single day. However, it’s a start, and the project can easily be scalable both in Beirut and beyond.

MARCH, the NGO I work at is already in talks with the Live Love Team to figure out what we can do in Tripoli’s Beb El Tebbeneh and Jabal Mohsen, and I urge everyone who is interested in helping to get in touch with Live Love Recycle and figure out what can be done, especially municipalities that are still unable to find solutions to their treatable waste.

As parties waste time and create more garbage with their campaigns

During elections time, when all political parties are busy polluting our eyesight and airwaves with their stupid, meaningless campaigns, it’s good to see NGOs (which some disgusting “new” political parties want to cut foreign funding from) step up and find sustainable solutions to this disastrous calamity we have been facing since 2015, and even decades before that.

There are always solutions, and waiting around for the government hasn’t helped, it just expanded their plans to steal taxpayer money to dump our untreated garbage into our already inaccessible sea.

No more excuses

You no longer have excuses to not recycle. Other initiatives might charge you to pick up your sorted recyclables, this one does not. Twice a month, two large bags is the current capacity, and that’s a great start. Download the app today, start sorting in your homes or offices or classes, and request a pick up every two weeks. All the recyclables will go to Arc En Ciel who will recycle them and use the money generated for their noble causes.

This is a win-win situation all round, and I’d like to wholeheartedly thank the UN’s WFP and the NGO ACTED for their support to make this initiative a reality.

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 ❤