“Green Doueir, clever Doueir”, Lebanon
Doueir Municipality in collaboration with the Med-O-Med program has been officially notified of the acceptance of its proposal for the project “Green Doueir Clever Doueir” funded by the European Union.
This project aims at improving the environmental health of the small town of Doueir in the province of Nabatiyeh in southern Lebanon. It is divided in two parts: the amelioration of waste management of the city and the awareness on issues related to the protection of the environment.
The waste problem in Lebanon has increased in the past years. The expansion of urbanization and the change of consumption habits of its population, have led to a situation that the government was not prepared to handle.
The awareness campaign is especially focused on children and youth of the locality, and it will develop environmental clubs, trees plantations and various training activities. Also it will implement workshops on composting, with the aim of training women’s groups in this practice, improving waste treatment and benefiting the environment and the domestic economy.
Nowadays, the Doueir Municipality has a contract with a private company to collect the rubbish from selected points, in which the Municipality has already placed iron barrels (not appropriate for waste). Although these points are distributed all around the village, the company collects only the waste inside the barrel whilst leaving the rest of the waste and the uncommon waste outside. This causes an unhealthy dirtiness. All the waste cleared up is placed 15 km away from the municipality.
Therefore, the problem in Doueir consists on a remarkable environmental degradation, mainly due to the non-existence of an effective urban waste management plan and a periodic cleaning. To make the matters worse, the costs are expensive and a lack of human, technical and financial resources is founded.
The municipality of Doueir would like to keep the contract with the company hired in order to keep clean the village. Furthermore, they want to raise the awareness among the population regarding issues such as the waste problem and the environmental protection.
The project
Previously, the Doueir Municipality has been managing different projects concerning environmental protection and reforestation such as: the closure and cancellation of some of the household waste landfill used during the war period, the plantation of trees in the field and the roads and the reforestation of three plots within the Municipality. The following activities are planned to be carried out:
- The development of a study to identify an effective strategy to manage the urban waste and to improve the general environment conditions.
- Capacity building aimed to the Municipality members and technicians, in topics related to the environmental protection and urban waste management.
- Awareness campaign based in environment protection and general hygiene maintaining addressed to all residents especially for housekeepers, student school, professional producing special waste.
- Appropriated equipment is required to be purchased in order to manage the general hygiene situation after an identification based in the needs.
- Education activities and environmental workshops to develop in schools (contacting NGO´s or local associations). Capacity building oriented to teachers, NGO’s staff u other people working on education issues.
- Exhibitions from Med-O-Med aimed to raise awareness on the population.
- Environmental clubs creation.
- Workshops focused on women collectives aimed to improve the domestic economy.
La muncipalidad de Doueir presenta un problema en el sistema de gestión y tratamiento de residuos, para lo que se harán mejoras en el proceso y se llevará a cabo una campaña de sensibilización ambiental.
