By Ester Carpenter — Five Gen-Zer squatted in early November on a small pile of rubbish in the middle of Martyrerplatz in downtown Beirut. In white gloves, they sorted bottle caps, cigarette butts, mouthpieces for hookahs, adhesive tape and plastic food packaging – all waste of the protests from the previous day. Although the five were students, they had not been in class for 26 days. Some of her teachers were upset, but the activists thought cleaning up after the protests that had hit the country since mid-October was more important than learning. They wanted to show the country how to take care of themselves, said 17-year-old Paul Hanna and took a break from sorting. “Without recycling, most of the garbage goes into the sea.” “We don’t want to see garbage on the street,” said Mira Raheb, also 17. “If we clean here, it will change (the mentality).”
Like youth activists around the world, Lebanese environmentalists reject the status quo, which means in Lebanon to protest against rampant government corruption, a sluggish economy and a long list of environmental issues that dominate everyday life. Hoping to take advantage of the current unrest, they are also working to make the country greener. Since the end of the civil war in the 1990s, Lebanon has not been able to provide its citizens with 24/7 electricity, a functioning public transport network, proper waste disposal, or drinking water. The lack of basic supplies has a particularly severe impact on poor families and working-class families, and the environment also suffers from people turning to diesel-powered generators and relying on plastic water bottles.
Last October, wildfire broke out in a forested area south of Beirut that quickly got out of control and set fire to more than 3,000 acres. Hot, windy conditions played a role, but so did the government’s incompetence (three privately donated fire helicopters were in poor condition at a nearby airport). Five days later, over a million Lebanese were on the streets demanding the government’s resignation. Prime Minister Saad Hariri had resigned until the end of October. “The forest fires were an important forerunner of the revolution.” “The forest fires were an important forerunner of the revolution,” said 36-year-old Adib Dada. As part of the protests, Dada, an environmental architect and biomimics specialist, led a guerrilla gardening project that planted 30 native trees and shrubs in downtown Beirut, a group called Regenerate Lebanon.