by Keren Setton
JERUSALEM, July 25 (Xinhua) -- The heat in the central Israeli landfill makes the stench from the garbage even stronger.
The hill overlooking the landfill was once a landfill itself - it reached its maximum capacity and is now being rehabilitated. Trees are beginning to grow, animals can be seen and there are tomatoes and other vegetables growing on land that feeds on the waste below it.
The smell is overpowering - it is a mixture of the garbage and the gases emitted from it. Some of the gases are captured in pipes and used to generate electricity, but the amount of gas is so large, much of it is not used.
Currently there are 13 such landfills scattered around Israel. In the past decades, the state has closed hundreds of small landfills that were used by many local councils to get rid of their garbage. While the small country is known as a hi-tech powerhouse and a global leader in innovation, when it comes to waste management and recycling, Israel is years behind with much to learn.
With this realization, the Israeli Ministry of Environmental Protection has devised a strategic plan which aims to change how Israel manages its waste by 2030. The main goal is to get rid of the majority of the polluting landfills. Currently, almost 80 percent of the waste in the country is buried in such sites - the aim is to reduce this to less than 30 percent.
"These landfills...will disappear as the years progress. As an alternative, we will see the establishment of waste-to-energy (W2E) plants - plants that take the waste, burn it and make energy out of it. Of course, alongside this - we need to see a significant increase in recycling and production of resources from the waste," said Oded Nezer, the head of the waste management division at the ministry.
The challenge is great. Israelis produce an enormous amount of waste. According to statistics gathered by the ministry, Israel has a relatively high per capita rate of waste generation. The average Israeli creates 1.7 kilograms of garbage a day. With the population in the country steadily increasing, this number is expected to rise accordingly.
The need for fundamental change is evident. The issue calls for an in-depth solution which addresses the many layers of the problem.
"Perhaps our biggest challenge is that there is not enough, almost no infrastructure, to handle waste in Israel. The greatest challenge is to overcome the crisis in planning. We need to plan many plants...so that there will be real and available alternatives to which we can then direct the waste," Nezer told Xinhua.
One of the plants attempting to address the problem is the Greennet plant in Jerusalem. Boasting what they say is the biggest such plant in the Middle East, the site was fully operational in 2014 and manages the waste of the entire Jerusalem metropolis by taking in about 2,000 tons of garbage a day and sorting it.
The sorted garbage is then diverted each to its designated recycling plant or, for now, landfill.
"The plant is basically a hi-tech plant, we are using a lot of types of technology," said Offer Bogin, CEO of the plant.
A total of 250 trucks enter the plant every day. The data is recorded and one can access to find out which neighborhood creates what kind of waste. There is optical and Infrared (IR) sorting, around 60 cameras are used around the plant to monitor it.
But the plant is currently just part of process that is still far from being complete. The non-separated waste is being sorted there but in the end, most of it goes to landfills. However, the plant does help recyclable waste that ended up in a mixed bin get to the correct destination. It is a step in the right direction.
"We are back at the time; I would say 30 years back on Europe. But we intend in 10-15 years to close the gap, because of technology," Bogin told Xinhua.
In recent years, Israel has been making steps towards increased awareness to the need for recycling. The public now must pay for plastic packing bags in supermarkets and there are recycling bins on all streets in the country.
"There are many things in which Israel is a leader in the world and we are very proud of this - waste management is not one of them unfortunately and this plan when it will be implemented, will put us at center stage," said Nezer of the Ministry of Environment Protection.
Among the many goals the ministry plan is aiming to reach is a significant reduction in the waste produced by Israelis.
"We are going to offer ways, both in education and information distributed to the public and to create tools that will decrease waste before it is produced - this is the best thing to do. The minute the waste is created, you need to take a lot of effort to handle it," Nezer told Xinhua.
Perhaps educating the public to consume less and recycle more will be the biggest hurdle to overcome.
The plan to improve Israel's waste management by 2030 was launched in 2018 and was budgeted at over 1 billion U.S. dollars - a massive investment on the part of the Israeli government. While dumping garbage in landfills is the cheapest way to dispose of garbage, the price the environment is paying is too high for the country to continue choosing this path.
Whether the plan will be successful or not, depends on many factors, but there is no doubt that the path Israel is currently on is not sustainable in terms of the future of the environment.
