Beirut Uses Radio Jingles to Spur Cleanup

Beirut’s authorities are using a catchy radio jingle to preach the virtues of responsible garbage disposal to citizens who abandoned their civic pride back in the 1970s.

The jingle, also played from loudspeakers on garbage trucks, is on everyone’s lips. But it is debatable whether it is persuading them to rush to the dumps with their waste bags.

After a year of peace, the residents of the once beautiful Mediterranean capital, which fell into decay during 15 years of civil war, have yet to master simple tasks such as depositing their trash where it belongs.

“It’s a national crisis,” said Issam Hasan, head of Beirut municipality’s cleaning department. “Businesses, restaurants, hotels and supermarkets and a large number of people throw out rubbish on the streets round the clock.”

So chronic is the problem that rat-infested garbage is piling up on street corners throughout the city.

Roads that have been recently asphalted to cover up some of the war scars are dotted with the rotting heaps, some of which stand next to elegant shops in smart Beirut areas.

Beirut newspapers, taking part in the government-led campaign, have condemned the “mountains of garbage that make one’s hair stand on end.”

“Trash highway” is how they refer to the seaside Ouzai motorway south of Beirut, where a field of garbage extends for hundreds of yards, emitting a stench that fouls the Mediterranean breeze.

“I was shocked by the smell. Garbage is everywhere in Beirut,” said French vacationer Emile Dufaunt, one of many Westerners who have visited Beirut at peace.

To combat the crisis, the government set up a committee that in July embarked on the daunting task of cleaning up Beirut and teaching residents how to dispose of garbage.

Shafik Sardouk, who resigned as mayor of Beirut in October, blamed the civil war for the mess. The city, he said, could provide only a minimum of services and residents were too busy staying alive to worry about where they left their garbage.

“Before the war if I saw a little trash I got annoyed, but after 15 years of fighting you don’t worry about such things,” Sardouk said. “People still need more time to adjust.”

Since the violence stopped last year, the municipality’s services have been slowly progressing.

Sardouk said work is under way to reactivate a garbage incineration plant and another facility that converts waste into fertilizer. Fifty new garbage trucks have been bought to replace older vehicles.

But what urgently needs replacing, said Sardouk, is the aging and underpaid work force. Each of the 2,730 rubbish collectors, whose average age is 58, receives a monthly salary of $90.

Unaccustomed to regular work for 15 years, they have become lazy, Sardouk added. The municipality is still waiting for government approval to hire 200 new workers.

The committee is supervising road and pavement repairs, mending broken street lamps and removing thousands of militia posters that compete for wall space throughout Beirut with those of entertainers.

Some 16,000 sewers, clogged with sand from militia barricades, have been cleaned and unexploded mines planted in some of them removed.

The committee’s project, financed by an $18-million grant from Saudi Arabia, also covers fighting the rats and trimming trees and shrubs that grew wild during the war.