This article forms part of a series of publications under SIRCLES project to support circular economy opportunities for employment and social inclusion in our partner territories in Palestine, Lebanon, Spain, Tunisia, Italy, Greece, and Jordan.

Two out of four biowaste management projects in Lebanon were awarded the “the SIRCLES project’s sub-grant”. The competition had the objective of supporting new or existing companies in Tunisia, Jordan, Palestine and Lebanon following a circular economy business model in the field of biowaste management. The goal was to increase green employment opportunities, especially for vulnerable social groups/groups at risk of social exclusion (i.e., NEET and women) and create green jobs by involving the most vulnerable sectors of the population and supporting environmental sustainability.

The winners are Htree and The Ground.

HTree was founded in 2021 after 8 years of growing Organic Agricultural produce with a PCCB certificate and decided to scale its business and move a step further thus got legally registered in order to reach further markets. HTree mainly produces organic vegetables, fruits, herbs and started recently producing processed food and mainly oregano (“Zaatar”) with high standards aiming to reach European and US markets. HTree’s agricultural business is growing tremendously which caused the emergence of a huge agricultural works. This brought up the need for more efficient fertilizers. Since, conventional fertilizers have some disadvantage, such as added expenses, lack of availability and severe impact on soil, water, air, bees, and health, HTree will start producing compost from findings in nature, thus providing cheaper fertilizer more ecofriendly.

On the other hand, Ibrahim Kawtharani, agriculture engineer and founder of the The Ground established his company in 2017. Being a well-known engineer who focuses on the avocado value chain since 2014, he is responsible for hundreds of dunums of avocado. Based on the needs of farmers, Kawtharani established The Ground, an agricultural services entity that currently engages in medium to large scale composting of the organic waste generated from the company’s orchard.  The Ground comprises 1000 dunums cultivated area and generates approximatively 800 tons of organic materials.