Ariel Sharon Park

The Hiriya landfill was located on the lands of the Palestinian village of al-Khayriyya, from which the name Hiriya is derived. The village, formerly called Ibn Ibraq, preserving the name of the ancient biblical site Beneberak, was renamed al-Khayriyya in 1924. In the weeks prior to the outbreak of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, its residents fled the village before advancing Haganah forces. According to Rachelle Gershovitz of the Israel Venture Capital Journal, the British authorities designated the area as Crown Land and plans were drawn up to use it as a draining plain to solve the annual flooding problem during the British Mandate. Hiriya is visible on approach into Ben Gurion International Airport as a flat-topped hill. Earmarked as a dump in 1952, the site grew to be more than and over above sea level. Three recycling facilities have been established at the foot of the mountain: a waste separation center, a green waste facility that produces mulch and a building materials recycling plant. In 1988, Hiriya ceased functioning as a waste landfill. After accumulating 25 million tons of waste, the Hiriya facility was shut down in August 1998. Since Hiriya is not under the jurisdiction of any municipality, the site is managed by the Dan Region Association of Towns Sanitation and Solid Waste Disposal board. ==Environmental park==

In 2004, an international competition was held calling for ideas on how to rehabilitate the mountain of garbage, turn it into a positive landmark and keep it from collapsing into the Ayalon riverbed. Plans were subsequently drawn up to remediate the site and use the mountain and surrounding land as the centerpiece of Ariel Sharon Park. An area was demarcated for the park during the term of the then Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, who was an avid supporter of the project. Latz has invented a technique to protect future flowers and fruits from contaminants: The landscape is being covered with a "bioplastic" layer that blocks methane, topped with layers of gravel and a meter of clean soil. and the former . Operated by the Ariel Sharon Park Company, the park will introduce many new ecological technologies. ==Remaining waste processing assets==

at Hiriya waste facility As of 2007, Hiriya was housing the largest waste transfer station in Israel. Doron Saphir was Hiriya's chairman. Three recycling plants operated at the foot of the mound, grinding building waste into gravel and dry organic matter into mulch, and a patented mechanical biological treatment demonstration facility where municipal solid waste was sorted utilising the properties of water. that separates recyclable materials using water technology. Eighty percent of the waste that enters the system is reused, while only 20 percent ends up in the landfill. ==Film==

In 2011, a short film about the transformation of the site, The Hiriya Project: A Mountain of Change, won first prize in the Clean Development Mechanism Changing Lives Photo and Video Contest sponsored by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Durban. ==See also==