Environment
As Beirut’s Trash Crisis Drags on, Children Recycle to Survive
Official waste management in the Lebanese capital is inadequate. Informal scavengers help fill the gap, but many are refugee children.
BEIRUT—On a small road adjacent to Beirut’s bustling Hamra Street, three boys rummaged through dumpsters overflowing with unsorted garbage. Another stood back, holding a metal trolley with plastic boxes full of tin cans.
“We’re collecting steel cans,” Omar (not his real name), the boy with the trolley, told CityLab. “There’s an empty lot in Zuqaq al-Blat [a Beirut neighborhood] whose owner will give us 1,000 Lebanese pounds [$0.66] per kilogram, so we take everything we’ve collected there after we go through all the bins.”