Tel - Aviv - the green city

Green City

The Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality has prioritized the promotion of sustainability, environmental protection and expanding the city's green spaces. Here you can find information about the city's parks and gardens as well as helpful tips on water conservation, information on eco-building construction, waste removal, recycling projects and more. Everyone can help make our city green, beautiful and environmentally proud!

Founded in 1909 as a "Garden City", Tel Aviv-Yafo today maintains its green commitment by applying high standards of eco-friendly municipal policies, led by the city's Environmental Authority.

Green Spaces:

The city has hundreds of parks, public gardens and parks enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of residents and visitors throughout the year - the parks include shaded play areas, fitness facilities (including outdoor gyms, extensive running and biking paths), and dog parks.

Roughly 20% of the city's area is green, enjoying approximately 110,000 trees. The city's largest park is Ganei Yehoshua (Yarkon River), which spans 3,000 dunams (740 acres) in the northern part of the city. There are dozens of smaller parks and gardens, 40 dog parks, 40 open-air fitness facilities and 8 community gardens.

Green Building:

The city encourages the usage of green technologies and methods in public construction, such as solar panels, efficient usage of sun light and applying isolation materials.

Bicycles:

Tel Aviv-Yafo enjoys over 100 kilometers of bicycle routes. A new city-run rental service will be introduced in 2011.

Green Education:

250 of the kindergartens and dozens of the schools in the city participate in green initiatives, including conservation, recycling, water preservation, urban nature projects, city-wide cleanliness and animal treatment.

Sanitation and Cleanliness:

The municipality's vision is a clean and green city that is both aesthetically pleasing and pleasant to live in and visit. The city´s sanitation division is working to achieve this goal through programs for street-cleaning, waste removal, and general beautification.

Recycling:

Did you know that the average amount of garbage produced in the Tel Aviv-Yafo municipality is three times the amount produced throughout the rest of the country? The city is focused on treating the problem of recycling waste and trash accumulation. Producing 1200 tons of garbage a day, the city is constantly raising recycling rates of various materials: paper, bottles, batteries, cardboard, electric appliances, cooking oil, and building refuse. The Environmental Authority also deals with reducing electromagnetic radiation, industrial waste, noise in public spaces, and air pollution.

Environment:

In recent years Tel Aviv-Yafo has registered a lowering of air pollution levels and a decrease in the number of days defined as severely polluted. These achievements are the direct result of the hard work invested in improving air and environmental quality in the city.

Improving Air Quality:

The Tel Aviv - Yafo Municipality operated in a variety of spheres to improve the quality of the city´s air. Following are some of the measures adopted:

• Compelling filling stations within municipal boundaries to sell lead free diesel oil.
• Equipping all municipal trucks with non-polluting engines.
• Paving 55 kilometers (35 miles) of bicycle paths.
• Planting 40 thousand trees.
• Establishing a special enforcement unit, in corporation with the Ministry of Environment, which fines owners of polluting vehicles.
• Encouraging the establishment of railway stations within the city as a means of reducing the number of incoming vehicles.
• Withdrawing most of the articulated buses from the city center.
• Closing polluting industrial plants which operate within the city limits.
• In 2005 vehicles with diesel engines which are not equipped with catalytic converters were barred from city center streets.

Beach Quality

Click Here

Water Quality

Tel Aviv - Yafo´s drinking water comes mainly (85% - 95%) from the National Water Carrier and from the "Mekorot" wells near the city of Rosh Haayin
Click Here

The Rehabilitation and Purification of the Yarkon River

In 2001 the Government of Israel approved the Municipality of Tel Aviv - Yafo´s plan to rehabilitate the Yarkon River and purify its waters through the Yarkon River Authority:

• Rehabilitating the waterway over a three-year period - the restoration of a water flow of sufficient quantity and quality, the prevention of water pollution upstream, the restoration of river water usage in agriculture, cleansing the river channel and rehabilitating its banks.
• Environmental development along the riverbanks for leisure time recreational activities over a period of up to ten years.
• Preserving a continuance of parkland and open spaces in the area of the river - from the vicinity of Rosh Haayin to the seashore.
• Water Commission virtually free of charge. The cost of the Yarkon River Rehabilitation Project - NIS 85 million - was to be borne by the municipal councils which are members of the Yarkon River Authority, Keren Kayemet LeIsrael - Jewish National Fund, the Ministry of Environment and the other Israeli government ministries which are members of the Yarkon River Authority.

Purifying the Waters of the River

• Pumping sewage waters from the river and blocking sewage outlets to it.
• Clearing the river channel of junk and refuse, strengthening the river banks and dredging the river bed of polluted sediments.
• Planting water purifying vegetation and restoring the unique marine life which serves, inter alia to destroy mosquito eggs.

Contact the Environmental Division:

200 Dizengoff, Phone: 03-7253800

Bicycles

Parks and Gardens

Recycling

Sanitation and Cleanliness

Olim Chadashim

ZDROJ:http://www.tel-aviv.gov.il/english/Environment.htm