From door-to-door to pay-as-you-throw: CLIMA goals for a sustainable ecological transition
Escaping our own limits in order to be part of a community called Europe. This was the main sensation for the attendees of Mediterranean territories facing the challenges of climate change and ecological transition, the online webinar hosted by ENI CBC MED Programme Managing Authority in partnership with the National Authority of the Programme for France and the Euromed Cities Network on Monday 15th February in the continuity of the Mediterranean Worlds Forum to take place in Marseilles on 7 and 8 February at the initiative of the President of the French Republic.
Our project was invited to present our experiences in waste management in the three countries involved in the project and to discuss the goals we would like to achieve regarding climate change by giving support of international cooperation. CLIMA representatives were Ms. Valentina Ghio, Mayor of Sestri Levante (Italy), the lead beneficiary of the project, and Ms. Nicole Gemayel, Mayor of Bikfaya (Lebanon). Both of them took part in the second slot, titled The strategic vision of Mediterranean territories for a sustainable ecological transition where local and regional governments joined a discussion on the vision and the strategies applied to face the specific needs of each territory.
Both towns are well-known tourist destinations where summer means an exponential increase in population. Due to this kind of variation, Sestri Levante and Bikfaya are to face relevant issues concerning waste management and territory protection. Among the solutions they applied, the Municipalities talked about a sustainable tourism management and development involving citizens and local stakeholders in order to keep on offering high-quality services and, on the other hand, actions to be taken for the valorisation and protection of their territories.
Population increasing during summer also influences the waste production percentage. This is why we gladly took the occasion of joining CLIMA project, whose relevance mostly lies on the cooperation between the three partners involved. Thanks to CLIMA project, we’ll be able to further develop our Municipal waste management plan by applying the pay-as-you-throw system, where the taxes to be payed are proportionally related to the undifferentiated waste production.
At the moment, both in Bikfaya and in Sestri Levante citizens see their waste collected by the separate waste collection system called “door-to-door”.
Bikfaya is the only Municipality in Lebanon where garbage is collected "door-to-door" because waste collection is, generally, badly organised. We had several problems to develop CLIMA project, but we intend to keep on fighting to reduce the pollution level, which is a dramatic issue for our country.
These meetings are, for our partners, relevant occasions to exchange experiences with other countries and to take inspiration to programme innovative solutions in order to go beyond their own limits and to cooperate to a new idea of the future to be handed down to next generations.