Byblos – or Jbeil for those who prefer it – is clean, that’s the least we can say as we walk along the paved paths, among the restaurants and across the millennia-old remnants of cultures the world no longer remembers.

The municipality has intelligently set forth a comprehensive waste collection and treatment system, through deploying a fleet of garbage trucks, similar to Suklee’s and has spread hundreds upon hundreds of bins around the city, that are periodically emptied.

Blimey! This is surreal, and resembles more a dream than a Lebanese reality, for a look at the Hbeline landfill shows a strikingly organized 100 thousand square meters of garbage disposal surfaces, in which organic waste is being treated for ulterior use, while various individuals sort the rest with the help of numerous machines.

“This is a system similar to European ones,” said Byblos Mayor, Ziad Hawat in an interview to MTV, “garbage is sorted and buried, as organic substances are turned into compost.”