Beirut, Lebanon | Seattle, USA Sierra Leone just announced that they want no part of a reported deal that would send Lebanese household waste to the West African nation. Last month, the Government of Lebanon approved a plan to export many tons of household trash from Beirut and Mount Lebanon to an African or Middle-Eastern country. The global dumping plan has been denounced by local and international waste experts as not only likely illegal but also environmentally irresponsible.
Despite the opposition, Agriculture Minister Akram Chehayeb, chair of the ministerial committee in charge of the waste management plan, announced that the government has agreed to contract two international companies in accordance with local and international laws to export Lebanon's trash -- Howa BV from the Netherlands and Chinook Urban Mining International of the United Kingdom.
On August 11, 2015, in Minsk, Belarus, the second sub-regional seminar of IPEN Participating Organisations was completed. The event was coordinated by Eco-Accord, IPEN Hub for Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia (EECCA), and Centre of Environmental Solutions (CES), Belarus, and was attended by NGOs from Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine, and representatives of IPEN and the Organization for Security and Co-operation (OSCE) in Ukraine. They discussed issues associated with strengthening civil society organisations working on chemical safety. The first seminar of the series was held in June 2015, in Almaty, for Central Asia countries.