A lot of bottles will be piling up on the streets tonight. Soon they will be in landfills or riverbeds, adding to the mountains of garbage that are destroying our environment. But what if the bottles (71 million per year) went to the right place? What if the they could be reused to help support Lebanon’s endangered glass blowing industry–one of the oldest trades (think Phoenician) that the country has ever known? And what if you could do something about this?
The good news is you can. You can help support this new project by simply sharing the crowd funding campaign, donating a few dollars or buying your holiday gifts online from Lebanese artisan glass blowers. The money will go toward purchasing a glass recycling truck and glass recycling bins to be placed around Beirut.
It’s called the Green Glass Recycling Initiative Lebanon (watch the video above) and it’s being spearheaded by Environmental Engineer Ziad Abichaker. His projects have already had a significant impact on Lebanon’s growing recycling industry. These include existing programs that process waste at several towns in Lebanon, used to produce fertilizer and building materials, such as those used to construct the country’s first recycled building and brewery, which I covered earlier this year.
You can also watch Ziad’s Ted Talk here.
Give this initiative some thought next time you are throwing away bottles or complaining about pollution in Lebanon.
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UPDATE 4/12/2014
There is less than one week left to support this campaign. According to an email from Ziad, they have received $18,000 in offline contributions, in addition to those on the Indiegogo site, leaving them just $3,270 short of their goal.
