Lebanese youth open zero-waste market
Active during the 2015 trash crisis, Lebanon’s younger generation are pushing for environmentally friendly products, seen in the opening of Recycle Lebanon’s EcoSouk.
BEIRUT — “The older generation doesn’t have much hope [in environmentally friendly change]. The younger generation, however, is trying to make that happen,” Joslin Kehdy, the founder of Recycle Lebanon, told Al-Monitor. “But I don’t think hope alone is going to save us — a market will,” she added.
That market is now open. Earlier this month, Recycle Lebanon, a nongovernmental organization founded to find sustainable and ecofriendly solutions to the garbage crisis in Lebanon, opened the country’s first permanent zero-waste store, EcoSouk, as part of its BalaPlastic movement, which advocates reduction of plastic waste.
“We need to show there is a way that avoids the incinerator. … We can protest, we need that, but we also have to have physical redesigns,” Kehdy, in her early 30s, said.
Located in the bustling Harma neighborhood of Beirut, EcoSouk, a hub for raising awareness around waste reduction, sells a wide variety of ecofriendly products including upcycled jewelry, organic honey and satchels made from discarded plastic bags.
