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

Lebanon is a middle-income West Asian Middle Eastern country, with a population of approximately 6 million people, of which around one in every six is a refugee. The solid waste management (SWM) infrastructure of the country is, in the best case, mismanaged and, in the worst case, nonexisting, with few exceptions. However, optimized low-tech composting techniques are enabling rural Lebanese communities to locally treat their source-separated organic wastes (SSO) and transform them into a valuable soil amendment. This article briefly summarizes the characteristics of solid waste in Lebanon, as well as the status of the current solid waste management infrastructure, and describes the low-tech composting techniques being successfully deployed in rural areas of Lebanon.

Waste Generation Rate
As a middle-income country, Lebanon has an estimated daily waste generation of 0.85 kg/capita in rural areas and 0.95- 1.2 kg/capita in urban areas, with a national weighted average of 1.05 kg/capita/day. That said, most local waste.

management experts working on waste characterization and recycling campaigns report encountering lower generation rates in rural towns and villages, ranging between 0.5 and 0.8 kg/capita/day. It is worth noting that the generation rate of solid waste could reach as low as only 0.3 kg/day/capita in informal settlements of refugees. In total, Lebanon produces an estimated 2 million metric tons of solid waste per year, around 90% of which is generated by households and commercial establishments, with the remaining 10% being mostly generated by industrial facilities.

Waste Characterization and Quality
Lebanon produces predominantly organic waste, comprised mostly of food scraps and toilet waste. Such organic wastes, as an official national average, comprise about 53% of household solid waste. This number could reach 60–70% in rural areas, hitting 80% in informal refugee settlements. In weight, organic waste is composed of roughly two-parts food scraps and one-part toilet waste. In volume, however, the organic waste portion is almost equally divided between food scraps and toilet waste, due to a high volume of low-density toilet paper.

The generation of household yard debris is limited, compared to the United States for example, since most housing units are apartments with no backyards or gardens. The presence of household toilet paper in the solid waste stream is significantly higher than that of the United States, due primarily to the high risk of clogging of the predominantly obsolete tight plumbing pipes that cannot sustain the channeling of such type of waste.

Chemically, the C:N ratio of Lebanon’s household organic waste is balanced enough to sustain the temperature of a compost pile between 45 and 65 degrees Celsius for more than two weeks, thus providing enough heat exposure to kill pathogens. Lab tests show a C:N ratio of 20 for the household food scraps portion, with a moisture content between 60 and 80%.

Physically, the abundance of toilet paper in the organic waste stream is beneficial when it comes to its capacity for absorbing the liquid fraction, but detrimental to the overall porosity of the compost mix if no bulking agents are added.

Biologically, the presence of a large volume of toilet waste, as well as a small portion of raw meat and poultry from households and local butcheries, increases the risk of having Fecal Coliform, E. coli, Salmonella species, and other infectious microorganisms.

Stakeholders
In Lebanon, the main public stakeholders in solid waste management are:
• 1,000+ municipalities, 70% of which have a population less than 4,000.
• 400+ towns/villages without municipalities, each governed by the head of its respective district (called a Qadaa or Caza) or governorate (called a Mohafazat). Lebanon has 26 districts and 8 governorates.
• 50+ federations of municipalities, encompassing 600+ municipalities.
• 5 ministries/governmental offices: Ministry of Environment (MoE), Ministry of Interior and Municipalities (MoIM), Office of the Minister of State for Administrative Reforms (OMSAR) and the Council for Development and Reconstruction (CDR).

By: Antoine Abou Moussa
linkedin.com/in/antoineaboumoussa