anything just so we can. help the local authorities are absent when it comes to waste management and i think we should put it on record that while we were running to clean this part of the beach because we saw the mayor walking in the opposite direction and we asked him to come help and lead by example and he said he was too busy. three years ago local residents forced the closure of what was then the main local dump garbage was left to mount up in the streets of beirut as garbage collection services was simply suspended it. heads up the nature conservation center at the american university of beirut she says the government lets the crisis happen despite repeated warnings it will happen again because we don't see from the government any plan to implement a sound waste management solution so it will happen in some cities but in some other cities where positive change has been already implementing it will not happen

. these days garbage collection is once again working normally in beirut but the trash is simply taken to a new jump sometimes it goes to an incinerator but that pollutes the air recycling containers like these and not get widespread these ones were provided by sea at his company he says since the garbage crisis more people are keen to see recycling introduced. people have really embraced and they're asking us for more and more locations but the problem really however is that sometimes people leave their bags outside the bins they don't put the stuff in and if you keep bags out other people are bringing unsorted garbage bags and they were places near those bags and then sort of degenerate into a mini landfill. in addition to the recycling waste his. company also salts through

twenty tons of household garbage each day he's employed twenty three syrian refugees to do the work giving them proper contracts and the local minimum wage equivalent to some five hundred u.s. dollars a month the company collects metal textiles paper and huge amounts of plastic c.r.b. shaka open the facility in the middle of the garbage crisis taking out a loan of more than seven hundred thousand us dollars. the garbage processed here gets one hundred percent recycled organic waste which makes up a high percentage of garbage unleaded on this turned into compost. the problem was before the crisis is that all the stories would go to a landfill and when the crisis happened this was the instigation to build a facility like this one where you have sorting and kobolds thing and where nothing goes legal and third order the intimidating. but that's not all on the roof of this

refugee center in beirut he's putting some of the recycled waste to good use cod chuck his company makes what he calls eco boards out of plastic waste they used to create raised beds for the tickle gardening the bedsit filled with compost generated from the organic waste. the rooftop offers over one hundred square meters of space on which to grow vegetables there are three thousand plants here in all. a group of women at the refugee home have set up a catering service using the vegetables it's their own company. i'm working yeah i'm back here and. i have a very big. head might all have that good bread and income. for my my family. meanwhile eddie batar from the beach

cleanup campaign is pursuing new solutions for beirut's waste disposal a mobile phone up allows residents to have paper and plastic waste collected from their homes his drivers deposit the waste in the carriage ready for a partner company to collect and recycle it. they're now getting between sixty and one hundred orders a day. if the democrats are we will believe that there's room to grow and people want more of those services because it's. their daily life. in just six months fifteen thousand people have downloaded up and five thousand households using his service regularly. hundreds of old clothes also find their way into the trash most within a year many of them unworn every second the equivalent of a truckload of textiles arrives or to trash or is burned making five hundred

billion u.s. dollars worth of wasted goods a year in. the clothing industry is also environmentally damaging every year over half a million tons of textile microfiber end up in the oceans the equivalent of fifty billion plastic bottles. greenpeace says that between two thousand and two thousand and fourteen worldwide clothing production doubled it's now around one hundred billion items that new clothing in. in germany consumers buy an average of sixty such items annually and wear them just as long as they did fifteen years ago and. spend time on from the german clothing foundation is a patient man and he doesn't mind his job unpacking boxes of discarded clothing and blankets in the city of hempstead but over the past five years he's noticed a change people now throw in all kinds of items that simply don't belong here. and

a construction site warning them. of. clothing banks are increasingly being used as garbage containers perhaps a case of people not only having too many clothes but too much of everything so how is this happening to. the cotton fields have traditionally been a key factor in the production and pricing of quality clothing global cotton production is on the rise climbing fourteen percent last year alone nevertheless the proportion of textiles containing cotton has dropped that's because of the growing over production of clothing and other textiles worldwide. cotton is gradually being displaced by synthetic fibers with the chemical industry eager to expand its share of the supply chain as a quick glance around shopping zones in germany confirms synthetic clothing is all

the rage in addition to the low prices that can cater to different requirements being comfortable jura bull and breathable and umbrella organization for clothing collectors in germany is alarmed by the trend toward more and cheaper textiles i have. every year in germany one million tons of textiles off thrown away that's the equivalent of a cure of trucks covering one thousand kilometers. it's unrealistic to expect all that material to be used for people in need. you know from all we calculate that less than ten percent is actually given to local charitable initiatives to talk to you once it's out it's like i can give them. as for the other ninety percent that's passed on to sorting companies which later sell it on the world market the price this companies pay has fallen in recent years to three hundred euros per tonne five years ago they were paying four hundred per tonne back then the surplus of used

clothes was not.