Industry Must Pay to Clean Up Lebanon

["Greenbase" <greenbas@gb.greenpeace.org>]

GREENPEACE: INDUSTRY MUST PAY TO CLEAN UP LEBANON 
Industrialists must end toxic pollution of  water, soil 
and air 
 
Beirut, 16 March 1997 - The Greenpeace 
Mediterranean Office today urged the Association of 
Lebanese Industrialists (ALIND) to accept the fact 
that industry is a major source of marine, soil and air 
pollution, and that industrialists must pay for the 
pollution they cause and help clean up Lebanon and 
its coast. 
 
The call came during a lecture held by Mr. Jacques 
Sarraf in Beirut at the Lebanese Management 
Association (LMA) in Beirut on "the consequences 
of the GATT on the Lebanese economy". 
Greenpeace used this opportunity to confront Mr. 
Sarraf with these demands because he has been 
refusing to meet us. 
"The Lebanese industry is producing every year more 
than 326,000 tons of waste, an undefined amount of 
it is toxic," said at the LMA building Fouad Hamdan, 
Lebanon campaigner of the Greenpeace 
Mediterranean Office. "Industrial growth is expected 
to lead to an output of about one million tons of 
waste yearly by 2010." 
 
"Today, all the industrial waste is being dumped in 
the Mediterranean Sea, in rivers, into the ground or 
in dozens of dumps all over the country. Mr. Sarraf 
and many industrialists are responsible for this and 
must actively help solving Lebanon's waste crisis," he 
said. 
 
Major polluters in Lebanon are the cement and 
asbestos pipes factories in Chekka and the "Lebanese 
Chemical Company" in Selaata. Greenpeace proved 
scientifically that industry in Chekka and Selaata are 
a major source of marine, soil and air pollution.  
 
Sample tests carried out by our research laboratory 
at Exeter University in England showed that 
groundwater in Chekka is polluted by a wide range 
of toxic chemicals, while emissions and outflows 
from the cement factories pollute the air and the 
Mediterranean Sea. (1) 
 
Eternit, which produces cement pipes with asbestos, 
still uses this deadly substance asbestos. Numerous 
people died from asbestos during the past years. The 
most endangered are the workers. No measures can 
guarantee total security. Available alternatives should 
be used like steel to strengthen the cement pipes 
instead of asbestos. (2) 
 
"ALIND, as an urgent step, must set up one or 
several centers to collect and store safely above 
ground the industrial solid waste generated by the 
Lebanese industry. This should be financed by the 
industry. Making industrialists pay will surly force 
them to reduce their waste production and introduce 
clean production methods in all industrial processes," 
Hamdan concluded. 
 
For further information please call in Beirut Fouad 
Hamdan,  ++961-1-785665, or ++961-3-756429. 
email: gp.med(cyberia.net.lb 
 
NOTES: 
 
(1) The polluting factories are not restricted to 
Chekka and Selaata in northern Lebanon. The Mount 
Lebanon is the center of hundreds of factories that 
dump their effluents via pipes in and around Junieh 
bay. The polluting Sibline cement factory in the 
Chouf uses outdated machines. In the Beqaa Valley, 
the Mimosa paper and tissue plant, tanneries and 
other factories pollute the Litani River and the 
Qaroun lake.  
 
Greenpeace believes that the solution to our 
environmental problems is not to copy all mistakes of 
the Western societies. We do not have to go through 
the ecological tragedy of having to use end-of-pipe 
technologies (filters and water treatment plants), and 
then ask ourselves what to do with toxic filters and 
toxic sludge.  
 
The industry must bypass this phase and go directly 
from a systematic pollution of our environment to a 
sustainable development and the introduction of 
clean technologies in all industrial processes. Under 
sustainable development Greenpeace understands a 
form of progress which covers the needs of the 
present without taking away from future generations 
the bases for the satisfaction of their needs.  
 
 (2) An "Eternit" manager told Greenpeace that he 
uses only the "good" white asbestos to produce 
cement pipes, and not the "bad" blue asbestos. Fact is 
that both white and blue asbestos cause lung cancer 
when inhaled. He said that asbestos is still used in the 
US. So what! It is banned in Europe and Saudi 
Arabia. It should be banned in Lebanon.