You Stink

You Stink is the motto of a wave of protests in Beirut and other places in Lebanon that erupted in late August, 2015, after a month earlier a landfill that used to take the waste of half the country was closed, with the government failing to organize alternatives, leading to heaps of uncleared trash in the streets.

After the initial protests were met with violent response from police, the prime minister of the caretaker government, which failed to elect a president for over a year and extended its own mandate twice, apologized and stated that the trash issue was "the straw that broke the camel's back. But the story is bigger than this straw. This is about the political trash in this country".

After a six-hour cabinet meeting on September 9, a plan was agreed on to temporarily re-open the Naameh landfill to get rid of the rubbish already in the streets, and use two other landfills as midterm dumps. The plan was met with criticism by some "You Stink" activists but mild approval by some environmentalists.