Cleaning Up Our Lebanese Landscape

We all know that Sukleen is Lebanon's sanitation arm, tending to dirty highways, emptying sky-high dumpsters, and even turbo-sweeping some streets with pressurized water, as can be witnessed early mornings in the Beirut Central District. Sukleen roams and reigns over the roads, but there's still a lot that can be done.

Take, for example, a fenced-in field in Mansourieh, totally unoccupied but littered with hundreds of bags of trash. It's a veritable brewing ground for mosquitoes, rodents and other nasty pests, posing a huge human health hazard if one of these carriers bit a passerby or resident in the vicinity. The field is adjacent to a duo of dumpster trucks Sukleen manages, but for some reason, the field has never been tackled. And it’s been like that for years.

I'm not sure if the municipality forbids entry onto this private property, but surely an exception must be made, because the mounds of rubbish are unsightly and potentially dangerous. A few months ago, I was thrilled to hear a Twitter campaign initiated by Virgin Radio Lebanon in collaboration with Sukleen. #VRLgoesgreenwithSukleen was the hashtag to Tweet along with a photo of a littered location in need of a desperate clean-up.

I rushed to the Mansourieh lot, snapped a photo, and tweeted it, receiving immediate acknowledgment and a request for my contact information. Beyond that, there was never any follow-up, and though I again attempted to reach out to @VirginRadioLB, no communication was ever established.

I’m assuming the campaign has either ended or been halted. If that is the case, does anyone know of an organization that’s made it its mission to clean Lebanon with a fine-toothed comb? Would they need some type of access rights to enter the site and collect the rubbish? Under what circumstances, if any, would there be resistance to such a noble endeavor to polish the Lebanese landscape?