SHARE
Lebanon
22-04-2020 | di COOPI
Lebanon. An awareness campaign mobilizes communities towards eco-friendly behaviours
28 class workshops, a school art contest and a survey held in retails shops are some of the activities implemented during the 3rd quarterly of the project “SWaM Akkar. Supporting Sustainable Solid Waste Management in Jurd al-Kaytee, Akkar”, financed by the European Union in Lebanon since June 2018. The project led by COOPI is implemented in collaboration with COSPE, Mada, AUB, Coop. Erica, StudioAzue, and the municipality of Jurd al Kaytee. All these activities are part of the awareness campaign ‘Don’t WASTE your WASTE’, which is one of the central initiatives of the entire project.
28 class workshops with a total amount of 587 attendees were held in 7 different local schools. A first activity, addressing 1st and 2nd grade’s students was the reproduction of a short video on littering and the distribution of a comic book on environmental issues, while the second activity targeted grades 6,7 and 8 showing a video regarding the actual situation of non-legal, open air dumps and their impact on the Region. Moreover, a school art contest was designed and launched aiming at giving children an opportunity to have their say into the participatory process of the project focusing on the requalification of the Fneidek landfill.
All students were very cooperative and showed a keen interest in the shared information. They expressed their willingness to adopt new behaviours towards reducing their littering and to work toward keeping a clean environment at school as well as at home.
Schools' workshop
At the same time the awareness campaign focused on the use and abuse of plastic bags within the retail shops in Jurd el Kaytee. 173 questionnaires were filled. The questionnaire was elaborated in order to determine current use of single use plastic bags in retail shops and what barriers exists to plastic bags reduction. Generally, shopkeepers showed interest to switch to more eco-friendly bags. However, some claimed that there is no source to buy any sort of alternatives to plastic bags since paper or tote bags are more expensive. One of the shops, as an example, is already using paper bags, instead of plastic ones, but they have problems in finding suppliers and big quantities that is why they are still using plastic bags as well. The outcomes of the survey will be fundamental to design a scheme to assist and support the community.
Throughout the last quarterly the awareness campaign “don’t WASTE your WASTE” addressed students, schools and retail shops. The general objective of the campaign is to build a common consciousness about the issue of solid waste and to mobilize the communities towards a stronger sense of respect towards the environment they live in. Thanks to the collaboration with other NGOs (COSPE, AUB, Mada, ERICA, Studio Azue and the UoMJeK) an integrated sustainable solid waste management within the area will be reached.