Green Track is a social enterprise, offering both a service and a product, forming an overall solution to fix the neglected waste management process in Lebanon. Our approach involves three phases, and begins with a service. Using a model that already runs successfully in the Tripoli area and surrounding townships and villages, our first phase starts with an awareness campaign.
We recruit local volunteers seeking change, largely composed women whom we call our ‘Green Women’, and run awareness campaigns that interact with individual households and entire communities. Here we show them how to sort their garbage, the effects that a cleaner environment has, and get them to have a stake in a cleaner environment. Once apartment buildings show interest, we remove any obstacles they face to sorting at source by offering them free garbage bags and a collection bin in their building. This service is our foundation, which provides us with a steady supply of recyclable waste for our operations.
Phase two is our collection phase. Here we provide the households that engage with us with a free weekly pick up service from their building/ approximate area. In this we also collaborate with a similar company in Beirut called LiveLoveRecycle, whose waste collection application we offer to households in Tripoli, though those that use it are in the minority. The collection is currently done with a truck that we own, but we have leased two electric garbage tuktuks from LiveLoveRecycle in order to increase our collection ability as we are increasing our household engagement in Tripoli.
Phase three is the processing and sale of the recyclable material. The weekly pick up brings all the waste to our warehouse in Jabal Mohsen, Tripoli. Here the materials are further sorted (different types of plastic separated, metals, cardboard, electronics) by our employees. At this stage the valorisation process begins. The dirtier plastic is baled in our baling machine into 70m2 – 25 kilo bales, with an average market value of $350 per ton. The cleaner household plastic is shredded into small flakes and bagged, with an average market value of $400 per ton. We are also in the process of developing a plastic cleaning machine for the plastic flakes, which raises the value to $550 market per ton. The metals and aluminium are also sorted into their various types, and are sold at approx $800 per ton.
We sell our plastic to local Lebanese buyers. Currently our customers are those that process it further and re-use the plastic to create new products.
