Bkerkasha, a cliffside village overlooking the wondrous and biodiverse valley of Qadisha, relies in part on nature-based tourism for its livelihood. Haphazard disposal of solid waste necessitates reduction in local waste streams. Proper solid waste management and composting could reduce waste quantities and increase the touristic value of the village while lowering the costs of agricultural inputs. But, the municipality can only afford to handle collection with no technical support to streamline Bkerkasha’s waste management, which poses a threat to local jobs and traditional land stewardship.
etermining the quantities of different types of waste the community produces, researching whether a best-practice composting plan should be executed at the household, farm, or community level, exploring other waste-reduction avenues to reduce haphazard disposal, puzzling out the household-level context to facilitate sorting at the source, and quantifying the economic value of eco-tourism and the average costs of chemical fertilizers to better understand the local economic value of proper waste management.