Lebanese TV network LBCI published a picture June 19 showing a large polluted area along the coastline of Beirut, which then quickly appeared on Lebanese social media networks. A video shared June 1 by the Lebanese Transparency Association, a nongovernmental organization fighting corruption, also showed how badly polluted the water is a few meters below the surface. Although this problem is not new, it seems to reach a new level every year, polluting even underground currents.

“The world’s most beautiful pollution” — that's how blogger Claude El Khal referred to the coastal waters of Lebanon on his blog after LBCI shared the picture of a brown-colored area in the sea, close to the shore where people usually enjoy a swim in summer. Already in 2002, university student Lena Kakati warned on the Planetary Notions website, a global student platform that addresses topics of environmental importance, “Our natural waste greatly harms our health.”

She wrote, “A cycle forms when we dump our wastes in the water: Fish find it and eat it, and then people catch the fish to have for dinner.”

Since then, nothing seems to have changed, and since the garbage crisis in the summer of 2015 things have only gotten worse. Starting in early June, activists have shared pictures of trucks going from Burj Hammoud, north of Beirut, to the sea to dump trash there. Minister of Environment Tarek al-Khatib said June 13 that as per the contract between the contractor and the Council for Development and Reconstruction, the garbage is to be thrown in the sea.