BEIRUT— Prime Minister Saad Hariri on April 24 announced Warak Beirut, a recycling project that promotes source sorting of paper and cardboard at government and other public institutions in Beirut. The Beirut municipality will implement the project in cooperation with Live Lebanon, a program of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) that encourages Lebanese citizens living abroad to help fund development projects in the poorest areas of the country. About a week after the announcement, on May 1, the company contracted to sweep the city's streets and collect and transport trash began operations.

The aim of Warak Beirut is to reduce the amount of waste sent from the city to the landfills in Costa Brava, in the southern suburb of Choueifat, and Bourj Hammoud, in the Metn district of Mount Lebanon governorate. Both were opened in March 2016 by ministerial order to help deal with the garbage crisis that gripped the city for almost a year.

In July 2015, garbage began piling up in Beirut and Mount Lebanon after residents living near the region's only landfill, in Naameh, south of Beirut, staged demonstrations demanding the site's closure. The landfill had been expanded many times, and locals complained of the stench and fear of the spread of diseases. In 2016, the national government announced a plan to get a handle on the garbage situation, but in 2017 the Beirut municipality decided to take matters into its own hands and implement a separate waste collection and disposal plan of its own.

Moughir Sinjaba, a member of the Beirut municipal council, explained to Al-Monitor that Warak Beirut will include distributing sorting and collection containers for offices and corridors in public buildings, running an awareness campaign about the sorting system and its importance, and developing an application that organizes sorting, collection and transportation of garbage to recycling factories.