Yesterday Sunday 1st of November 2015 was the last day of the 22nd edition of the francophone books exhibition, “22 eme Salon du livre francophone de Beyrouth”, held at Biel, and organized by the Union of importers of books in Lebanon and the French cultural center in Beirut. The exhibition was inaugurated on October 23rd 2015, under the patronage of his Excellency Prime minister Tammam Salam represented by Culture Minister, Rony Araiji and Mr Gérard Larcher, president of the French Senate. The exhibition opened its doors to the public Saturday, October 24, 2015; where this event represented a space for exchange and intellectual dialogue; and attracted many exporters, authors and visitors and gave many authors and editors the opportunity to meet their public, exchange their views, and to organize debates. This event carried a marked importance since it’s the third French book fair after that of Paris and Montreal, and the first in the Middle East region in importance. Greenarea chose to participate in this event and was the only specialized environmental site, in this important cultural event that attracted seventy thousand visitors in 2014. With the environmental theme as the dominant one in our stand and site; greenarea aims to raise awareness about the importance of the environment, in attempt to find an appropriate solution to many environmental issues and most importantly the latest environmental waste crisis that invaded our country since the 17th of July 2015 and the effects it has on the economic, sanitary and ecological sectors in our country. The greenarea stand served as a platform to display the environmental concept to deal with the waste crisis where many items made from 100 percent trash including calendar notebooks made from recycled paper. Greenarea stand attracted many students of many schools; the students were enthusiastic about the items displayed, and many were tempted to use and practice the environmental approach and minimize wastes and use waste in the most efficient productive sustainable way. Many visitors to the stand stated that recycling must be adopted as a must to counteract the growing crisis and that the government must make decisive steps to deal with and as soon as possible as well as make efforts to inform citizens about the magnitude of the threat which lurks in our neighborhoods especially with the winter season; so as to mitigate the large quantities of wastes that are spreading all over our streets threatening of sanitary and economic disasters. The stand has served other important purposes; through photos taken by our team of photographers, displaying the beauty of our country, and what we’ll be losing if the route the tarrying authorities are taking is continued; as well as informing visitors about our site and the many important topics discussed and published in four languages, as well as the introduction of greenarea’s continuing mission to shed light on all the present environmental threats that our country, region and the world are facing, with hopes that it will reach the sustainable goals desired and much sought by all.
