Lebanon generates more than 1.5 million tons of trash every year. Of that, 48 percent goes to landfills, 38 percent goes to open dumps, and only 16 percent is recycled. For a small country, finding new space for landfills is difficult, so recycling is imperative. IRD’s National Campaign for Initiating, Sorting, and Recycling Municipal Solid Waste in Lebanon, called NISR for short, is promoting environmental awareness and protection through adoption of the three R’s—Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Funded by UNICEF, NISR—which means vulture in Arabic—trains school teachers, students, and municipalities in recycling do’s and don’ts. It also provides tools and systems for waste separation, collection, and recycling.

IRD, together with TERRE Liban, a Lebanese organization, is working in 1,153 elementary and intermediate level public schools across Lebanon, reaching 300,000 students in all 915 municipalities. Sorting supplies such as recycled carton boxes are placed in all the classrooms and offices to collect paper waste. IRD has also installed school collection points, which are steel frames holding different colored bins for paper, organic, and non-organic waste. The contents of these bins are then transported to one of 15 consolidation points across the country before being sent to a recycling plant.

Ultimately, the goal of the program is to reduce the need for new landfills and create new businesses around recycling.

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