Composting Solutions for Rural Municipalities in Lebanon: Low Tech, Low Cost, and Locally Integrated

Waste Management Corner by Antoine Abou Moussa Waste Management Corner EM is expanding its content coverage of waste management issues with a special section of waste-themed articles in every issue, called Waste Management Corner. In this month’s article, Antoine Abou Moussa explores composting solutions in rural Lebanon. Composting of municipal SSO via passively aerated piles with limited turning, Keserwan District. Photo courtesy of Compost Baladi SAL. Composting Solutions for Rural Municipalities in Lebanon: Low Tech, Low Cost, and Locally Integrated Lebanon is a middle-income West Asian Middle Eastern waste in Lebanon, as well as the status of the current solid country, with a population of approximately 6 million people, waste management infrastructure, and describes the low-tech of which around one in every six is a refugee. 1 The solid composting techniques being successfully deployed in rural waste management (SWM) infrastructure of the country is, in areas of Lebanon. the best case, mismanaged and, in the worst case, non- existing, with few exceptions. However, optimized low-tech Waste Generation Rate composting techniques are enabling rural Lebanese commu - As a middle-income country, Lebanon has an estimated daily nities to locally treat their source-separated organic wastes waste generation of 0.85 kg/capita in rural areas and 0.95- (SSO) and transform them into a valuable soil amendment. 1.2 kg/capita in urban areas, with a national weighted aver - This article briefly summarizes the characteristics of solid age of 1.05 kg/capita/day. 2 That said, most local waste em • The Magazine for Environmental Managers • A&WMA • August 2020 Waste Management Corner by Antoine Abou Moussa management experts working on waste characterization and Physically, the abundance of toilet paper in the organic waste recycling campaigns report encountering lower generation stream is beneficial when it comes to its capacity for absorb - rates in rural towns and villages, ranging between 0.5 and ing the liquid fraction, but detrimental to the overall porosity 0.8 kg/capita/day. It is worth noting that the generation rate of the compost mix if no bulking agents are added. of solid waste could reach as low as only 0.3 kg/day/capita in informal settlements of refugees. In total, Lebanon produces Biologically, the presence of a large volume of toilet waste, as an estimated 2 million metric tons of solid waste per year, well as a small portion of raw meat and poultry from house - around 90% of which is generated by households and holds and local butcheries, increases the risk of having Fecal commercial establishments, with the remaining 10% being Coliform, E. coli, Salmonella species, and other infectious mostly generated by industrial facilities. 2 microorganisms. Waste Characterization and Quality Stakeholders Lebanon produces predominantly organic waste, comprised In Lebanon, the main public stakeholders in solid waste mostly of food scraps and toilet waste. Such organic wastes, management are: as an official national average, comprise about 53% of house - hold solid waste. 3 This number could reach 60–70% in rural • 1,000+ municipalities, 70% of which have a areas, hitting 80% in informal refugee settlements. In weight, population less than 4,000. 4 organic waste is composed of roughly two-parts food scraps • 400+ towns/villages without municipalities, each and one-part toilet waste. In volume, however, the organic governed by the head of its respective district waste portion is almost equally divided between food scraps (called a Qadaa or Caza ) or governorate (called a and toilet waste, due to a high volume of low-density toilet Mohafazat ). Lebanon has 26 districts and paper. 8 governorates. • 50+ federations of municipalities, encompassing The generation of household yard debris is limited, com - 600+ municipalities. pared to the United States for example, since most housing • 5 ministries/governmental offices: Ministry of units are apartments with no backyards or gardens. The pres - Environment (MoE), Ministry of Interior and ence of household toilet paper in the solid waste stream is Municipalities (MoIM), Office of the Minister of State significantly higher than that of the United States, due prima - for Administrative Reforms (OMSAR) and the rily to the high risk of clogging of the predominantly obsolete Council for Development and Reconstruction (CDR). tight plumbing pipes that cannot sustain the channeling of such type of waste. Current Waste Disposal Presently, most of the solid waste coming from the main Chemically, the C:N ratio of Lebanon’s household organic coastal cities of the country is disposed at a half-dozen, waste is balanced enough to sustain the temperature of a controlled, coastal dumpsites/landfills. “Controlled” means compost pile between 45 and 65 degrees Celsius for more disposal at a designated disposal site controlled by a than two weeks, thus providing enough heat exposure to kill government entity. Informal scavenging (“dump-picking”) pathogens. Lab tests show a C:N ratio of 20 for the house - is not allowed at controlled dumpsites/landfills. While these hold food scraps portion, with a moisture content between controlled dumps/landfills are better managed than simple 60 and 80%. open dumping of waste, they do not meet environmental In Next Month’s Issue… Zero Emission Transportation All sectors must decarbonize if the world is to achieve the ambitions of the Paris Agreement. The September issue examines the transportation sector’s progress toward zero emission vehicles, vessels, and planes. em • The Magazine for Environmental Managers • A&WMA • August 2020 Waste Management Corner by Antoine Abou Moussa recyclables from waste for recovery and also separate the organic fraction for bi - ological treatment. All of these MRFs and MBT facilities face major problems related to the very low percentage of recovered recyclable materials (less than 10% of total waste is recovered for re - cycling), limited space to soundly treat the organic waste fraction, and they are all located in the vicinity of inhabited areas, creating compatibility issues. Additionally, all these facilities need a way to discard of the large amounts of residual organic and non-organic wastes they generate. Waste disposal at open dumpsites is the norm in most rural locations outside of Beirut and Mount Lebanon gover - norates, despite numerous attempts in these areas to run MBT plants of capacities ranging between 10 and 150 metric tons per day. According to a non-governmental organization and an in-country environmental specialist (Dr. Naji Kodeih), 5 there are between 941 to 1,350 such open dumpsites operat - ing throughout Lebanon, with more than 150 of these dumps being open- burned at least once a week. Figure 1 illustrates the large number of waste dumps operating within Lebanon, and the variation in their burn frequencies (burns per week). Figure 1. Waste dumpsites and waste burn frequencies in 3 Lebanon. Composting Status in Lebanon standards that apply at these locations. Specifically, Lebanon’s The biggest operating sites in the country for composting of controlled dumps/landfills are still illegal under the Barcelona organic waste, which are located in a few cities and federa - Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment tions of municipalities, have been plagued for decades with and the Coastal Region of the Mediterranean, a Convention lack of financial stability, operational and administrative chal - to which Lebanon is a contracting party. lenges, and a public resistance due to the generation of foul odors and production of non-salable low-quality compost. By Long-term plans for implementing environmentally- contrast, as discussed below, some rural municipalities in conforming solutions are still unclear, especially with the con - Lebanon are making progress in successfully implementing tinuous governmental efforts to leverage on the status quo practical techniques for composting organic waste. created by the polluting coastal dumps/landfills in order to promote and adopt the more controlled, yet unpopular, in - Local Composting cineration technologies for these same cities. It is worth not - Given that large-scale, urban composting operations in ing that there are four, main recycling facilities in coastal Lebanon have been generally unsuccessful, households, cities, specifically Materials Recovery Facilities (MRFs) and commercial establishments and municipalities in rural areas Mechanical-Biological Treatment facilities (MBT), that each re - have opted for a different approach. The approach in rural ceives hundreds of metric tons of commingled waste per day. areas is to implement low-tech, low-cost, and locally inte - MRFs recover recyclable materials from waste via both hand- grated composting solutions that consider local culture and sorting and mechanical separation. MBT facilities separate available resources. These rural composting operations are em • The Magazine for Environmental Managers • A&WMA • August 2020 Climate Change Philosophy in Oklahoma by Ken Senour undertaken to produce a valuable high-quality compost prod - uct, and/or, to simply treat (biologically stabilize) the organic waste to reduce the environmental impact of the waste’s final disposal. Some specific examples of these rural composting techniques are highlighted below, first the composting tech - niques for producing a valuable soil-amendment product, then the techniques for pre-disposal treatment. Production of Valuable Compost Brief descriptions

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