About 80 percent of all waste in Israel is dumped, polluting the groundwater and diminishing the air quality. Efforts to increase the rate of recycling have so far seen little success. Over the past five years, the amount of waste recycled instead of dumped has increased from 18 percent to just 22 percent. By comparison, the European Union recycles 34 percent of its waste.

The Ministry of Environmental Protection is headed by Ze’ev Elkin, who, when we went to press, was in the midst of campaigning to become Jerusalem’s next mayor. An investment of four billion shekels (about $1.15 billion) is estimated to be what it will cost to effect real change in Israel’s waste disposal over the next decade. The idea is to use that money to establish plants where waste will be sorted and incinerated, the...

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