Today, Tuesday afternoon, we went for a tour of Ariel Sharon Park in Tel Aviv. When we arrived at the park I was in awe of its beauty. There were gentle hills covered with lush, green grass – something you don’t find much of in Israel. A stream bubbled along and poured into a beautiful lily pond filled with purple and white flowers. The park has the most spectacular view of Tel Aviv! Before our tour we stopped at the information center to watch a film and learn about the park’s history, and, most astonishingly how it started as an area to dump garbage.
This park had its origin in Israel’s need to dump its trash somewhere. The British came up with this idea of dumping the trash here right outside Tel Aviv. They thought that the area was a potential flooding zone, so there was no other use for the land. In 1930, Tel Aviv averaged 2.2 lbs of trash per person in a day. Since this garbage was dumped right near Tel Aviv, there were negative effects on the city. Possibly most disgusting was the horrible smell. In Addition, back when the mountain was open to garbage, it attracted large numbers of birds, especially segals. The seagulls became a major problem for planes flying in and out of the airport in Tel Aviv. If birds got into the turbines, the planes would crash. This issue almost led the airport to be designated as too hazardous and to be shut down. And when it rained garbage “juice” would flow from the mountain and contaminate the surrounding environment. Eventually, better decisions were made which ended the dumping of garbage on this mountain.
Jumping forward to the present day, we saw that this garbage mountain was closed, and is now a park. That is a good thing because Tel Aviv now generates 10 lbs of trash per person in a single day! This garbage is now collected in an area behind the park and then taken to the Negev by semi trucks. Today, they have also found a way to harness the bad gasses from the buried garbage. The park uses long tubes to extract the gas and produce electricity from this biofuel. In return, the park gets paid from other companies who want to use this electricity. As an excellent example of land reclamation (other than the odd shape of Hiria Mountain in Ariel Sharon Park) you wouldn’t think that it would have been a place where people dumped their garbage back in the 1900’s. Many species flowers, herbs, and other types of shrubbery have been planted to make this park look like a beautiful botanical garden. This landfill, with one of the best views of Tel Aviv, has turned out to be another excellent example of Israel’s focus on preserving and maximizing it’s natural resources.