Sidon Mayor Mohammad Saudi revealed Thursday that the southern city was ready to accept additional tons of waste from other areas if a new sanitary landfill was established.
"We have already provided them [the state] with an area for the landfill and we are waiting for an approval," he said.
The statement noted that the decision was unanimously agreed to by prominent figures in the city.
“We agreed that Sidon is ready to be part of a comprehensive environmental solution in Lebanon, as our current factory can process an additional 200 tons of waste per day, but we will not accept any garbage before our condition is met.”
The Cabinet approved late Wednesday Agriculture Minister Akram Chehayeb’s plan to resolve the garbage crisis by transferring management responsibilities to municipalities, a key demand of civil society groups that have staged street protests over the government's failure to cope with the crisis.
The plan, announced by Chehayeb following an extraordinary Cabinet session devoted to ending the garbage crisis, also called for establishing sanitary landfills in the northern district of Akkar and the Masnaa area near the border with Syria, reopening of the Naameh landfill for seven days, and supporting robust waste recycling initiatives.
The trash crisis has ignited a series of anti-government street protests since July organized by the “You Stink” movement and other civil society groups.
