From white city to green city?

Tel Aviv has implemented some initiatives to become more environmentally friendly, but there are still strides to be made in recycling, the transportation system and reducing pollution.

By ABRA COHEN
Recycling in Tel Aviv 370 (photo credit: Abra Cohen)
Recycling in Tel Aviv 370
(photo credit: Abra Cohen)
Tel Aviv may not be the first place you think of when you hear about green cities, but a growing movement towards sustainability and the use of recycling bins, bike lanes and solar panels are pushing forward the city that was built in the desert on sand dunes, a little over 100 years ago.
Known historically as the White City because of the imposing, white Bauhaus architecture, Tel Aviv is working towards being more environmentally friendly and has a number of influencers who are working to make the city greener. But are the efforts paying off and can Tel Aviv be touted as the greenest in the region? Environmental professionals point to various issues that need to be considered when “thinking green”: city planning, transportation, recycling, air quality and nature reserves within urban landscapes (think Central Park) are some of the key indicators to how a city is doing. While advances are being made to adopt more green initiatives and planning, the city may be lagging behind where some say it should be by now.
Strolling down tree-lined Rothschild Boulevard in central Tel Aviv, with billowing greenery that shades the pedestrian walk and multiple Tel-O-Fun bike rental stations, you may forget you’re in the Middle East. But as Prof. Alon Tal of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev says in an interview, while there is a movement towards green practices in the city, Tel Aviv’s report card is mixed.
He blames this on “a general lack of imagination” and says the city has a plan that is not very ambitious.
Tal, who is head of the Green Movement, points to factors like air quality and transportation in his assessment.
The bike transportation system is one of his examples.
While he says that the Tel-O-Fun rentals are a step in the right direction, he explains that “there needs to be twice as many bikes lanes if [Tel Aviv] wants to get the European model.”
The transportation system as a whole gets a “very low grade,” he adds. With polluting diesel buses, air pollution numbers are very high compared to the city’s European counterparts – and one out of every three days, the air quality is extremely bad. Add that to the “Red Line” light rail that is still years away from completion and the outlook seem bleak, but city planners say they are working to adopt new policies to improve Tel Aviv’s standing as a green metropolis.
Gil Aroyo, director of sanitation at the Tel Aviv Municipality, says that in 2010 Tel Aviv was one of the first Israeli cities to create a recycling plant, and to decide where and how to recycle waste in the area.
“It wasn’t easy,” Aroyo says, explaining that convincing residents to recycle was imperative. “There’s a new generation in Tel Aviv and in Israel. We see what’s going on outside of Israel and we are realizing how damaging waste can be.”
With over 100 curbside receptacles for plastic bottles in the city and a glass bottle return, Tel Avivians are visibly catching on to recycling, albeit at a slower pace. While recycling bins are ignored daily and the municipality says that 15 percent of all waste is now recycled, many items that are recyclable in other countries are making their way into the garbage instead of being reused.
Hagar Spiro-Tal, manager of the Tel Aviv-Jaffa branch of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI), says that when comparing Tel Aviv’s recycling statistics to that of the Western world, “we are very behind. We don’t have bins for materials like glass and cans.”
She explains that for recycling to work efficiently, it has to be readily available for people to access.
“People don’t want to put in an effort – if they need to search for it, they most likely won’t recycle,” she says.
With quality of life directly related to environmental issues, it is a hot topic – since 90% of the Israeli population resides in an urban area, according to the SPNI. Green initiatives and recycling programs in Europe and North America are often looked to as leaders in conservation and recycling fields.
Attracting a large international community and a general awareness towards going green, many Western models of recycling and sustainable practices are being tried and adopted in Tel Aviv.
Cara Abrams-Simonton is a self-proclaimed recycler and reuser. The US native says that while she thinks neighborhood recycling stations around Tel Aviv are great, they do not account for materials she is used to recycling, like aluminum and glass. “I think it’s wonderful that there are bins available in neighborhoods for people to use,” she says. “People seem to be in the habit of using the bottle recycling, but I wonder how many throw away their paper goods and other recyclables.”
Meredith Goldstone, who is originally from Queens, New York, and has lived in Tel Aviv for two years, says she thinks curbside recycling bins are important and believes they should be installed next to every garbage can in Tel Aviv, since people would be more likely to use them. Goldstone admits that she sometimes dumps recyclables into the trash, because she can’t find a recycling location and doesn’t always want to search for one. She adds that in her view, curbside recycling involves more than just plastic bottles: “Whenever I have something to give away, I put it outside on the bench and have confidence that someone will pick it up and get good use of it.”
Both environmental and municipality officials seem confident that items deposited into recycling bins are indeed getting recycled, but there are limited facilities in which to recycle – which is seen as an important element in sustainability. “We are a small country and don’t have the area to put the waste,” Aroyo says.
Spiro-Tal says that while there are small steps in many directions in terms of green practices, recycling is no exception. “There are good intentions, but it could be a lot better,” she says.
However, in comparison to other cities around Israel, she says Tel Aviv has many green initiatives and demand from residents, who want to live in a greener city. Spiro-Tal points to two examples where she says the city is working towards a more sustainable model: Community Gardens projects and subsidized composting bins.
The Community Gardens project has seven gardens in cities around the country, and the overall aim is to get underprivileged neighborhoods involved in their community. The three gardens in Tel Aviv are located in the southern part of the city and empower residents by taking a literally grassroots approach: having them get their hands dirty. Funded by both the municipality and the SPNI, the project provides an after-school program for at-risk youth. Not only do residents see the results in a community garden, but they also practice sustainable gardening and grow part of the food they eat.
“Nature is an integral part of a city, and with such rapid development, we need to make sure that nature still exists,” Spiro-Tal says, adding that great initiatives have been introduced in the past few years that have raised residents’ awareness of more sustainable practices.
But continued efforts need to be made to push them along. It is vital to ensure that urban areas have spaces for calm and quiet, she adds, pointing to three successes in the Tel Aviv area – Ariel Sharon Park and Yarkon Park.
ONE PROJECT in Tel Aviv that has garnered a lot of public attention is the extension of the Lahat Promenade, which connects a lower-level walkway with the upper-level boardwalk. The coastline is a popular destination for tourists and locals alike, and the construction, which has already started, has ripped up various parts of the beach – making it difficult to access and an eyesore to look at. Tal says this project is another sign that the city is choosing commercial interests over environmental. “It’s turning into a pay-to-sit area,” the Green Movement head says of the Tel Aviv coastline.
Dan Lahat, a councilman whose father built the promenade 30 years ago, says he follows the project and goes down to check on it daily. While he says he voted in favor of the project, he wanted it to be done in a two-part construction, to allow for assessment of the project partway through and examination of the results before going forward. Lahat says he was told that 6 percent of the beach would be lost to the extended promenade, but that the area that was lost is towards the back where people tend not to sit.
Spiro-Tal, for her part, says she likes the idea of connecting the upper and lower promenade, but building on the sand is something SPNI can’t support. Based on statistics, she says, right now Israelis only have a few centimeters of beach per person.
While disappearing precious coastline is a hot topic that is outraging some Tel Avivians, the city is working to reduce carbon emissions and create a sustainable model for building practices.
Uriel Babczyk, the municipality’s director of green building and sustainable planning, says that city planners are collaborating to reduce their carbon footprint in a variety of venues. Adopted in 2011, the city now has mandatory green building guidelines that affect private and public buildings, including hotels, schools and office buildings.
In addition to over 600,000 square meters of green building that is already completed or currently under construction, the city has signed a convention to reduce its carbon emissions by 20% by the year 2020.
Babczyk says that 67% of carbon emissions in Israel alone are produced by energy consumption in buildings.
Adhering to the green building codes will greatly improve the chance of actualizing this goal.
City planners are also laying the groundwork for sustainable neighborhoods. Together with the Heschel Center for Sustainable Design, the municipality is piloting a sustainable neighborhoods project in Bitzaron. It is aimed at educating and empowering residents, and creating leadership within the community to launch projects that make for greener living.
Babczyk says that energy surveys are an example of how the city is working to educate communities so that people are more aware of consumption. “We’re creating a new type of place and working together with the private sector, municipality and residents, too. So far it’s working quite well,” he says.
While environmentalists, city planners and council members may all have different ideas of what it takes to move Tel Aviv forward with a green model, one of the focal points that almost everyone points to is education.
Promoting sustainability, green practices and lifestyle are something everyone needs to learn. As Tal says: “Tel Aviv has the potential to be the best environmental city in the Mediterranean.”