Across Al Abadieh’s natural areas by the Beirut river, a disastrous quantity of primarily plastic solid waste is interlaced with tree trunks, branches, and rocks in and alongside the river. Because of cliffside open dumping and ineffective sorting in a facility upstream, plastic waste is not only loaded into the river channel, surrounding trees, and the river banks at an untold depth, a massive quantity of plastic pollution is swept into the Mediterranean with each storm event.
athering data on water flow rates, aquatic ecology, and characterizing the channel shape of the upper, middle, and lower parts of the Beirut river, investigating different plastic catchment technologies best-suited for Al Abadieh’s section of the river, mapping open dumps in the upstream watershed, investigating advocacy pathways to closing the open dumps, exploring ways of transporting the captured plastic from the riverbed to safe disposal sites through the improvement of a dilapidated historic trail, and fostering the revival of a recreational connection between the community and the river for stress and anxiety reduction.