What is segregated waste collection and how to achieve it in your home

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Making a difference is not easy, but you can start small - with yourself.

What's going on with garbage today?

Slightly over 90% of the waste that we put in the trash bin is disposed of. What to do with garbage in Russia at landfills. According to the rules, garbage must be compacted on specially equipped sites with bulldozers. Each layer two meters thick must be sprinkled with soil, and in the summer it should be moistened with water so that there are no fires.

In fact, things often turn out differently. Most Russian landfills dispose of all waste indiscriminately (including batteries, mercury lamps, combustible building materials, and so on). Garbage is not tamped properly and is not covered with insulating layers. This leads to environmental disasters.

Poisonous landfill gas is formed, which can seriously harm the health of people living near the landfill.

Fires occur at landfills, including at great depths. They cannot be extinguished for years. Poisonous liquid - filtrate - seeps from the landfill into groundwater, rivers and lakes.

What about the rest of the waste?

Approximately 2% of waste in Russia is incinerated, and 4% of waste is recycled What to do with waste in Russia. Recyclable materials go to the sorting line, where they select what can be used again. These are different types of plastic, paper, glass, metal.

Organic waste, which today accounts for 40 to 50% of the total waste, is not recycled in Russia: there are no documents regulating this process. Organic matter is sent to the landfill.

Greenpeace has calculated that if the situation does not change, the total landfill area in Russia will reach 8 million hectares by 2026. It's like the two Azov seas.

How is garbage disposed of in other countries?

Abroad, compost (fertilizer) is made from organic waste, converted into biogas, which can be used to generate electricity, heat, and also as fuel for cars.

In some European countries, up to 50% of waste is incinerated - this is carefully sorted waste that cannot be recycled.

But back in early 2017, the Council of Europe recommended that countries refrain from building new incinerators and develop the recycling industry.

Examples of effective waste reduction are known all over the world. For example, in the Japanese city of Kamikatsu, 80% of household waste is recycled. Residents divide them into 34 types. Local authorities have set a goal to reduce the amount of landfilled waste to zero by 2020.

This is how the inhabitants of the sleeping area of Tokyo collect waste.

In 76 countries around the world, they have legally restricted the use of disposable plastic packaging, which accounts for up to 70% of the total waste.

Why is everything different with us?

Abroad, they rely on separate waste collection. In Russia - for sorting mixed waste at enterprises. The difference is significant.

Maria Malorossiyanova project coordinator of the ECA movement

Sorting mixed waste is less efficient than separating it before it ends up in the bin. Large amounts of potential recyclable materials simply become unusable or unprofitable for recycling. This leads to the fact that the "tails" sent to incineration or disposal, increase. Also, industrial sorting of mixed waste excludes the participation of people in solving the problem. Therefore, they essentially do not think about how to reduce their education.

This is a global problem: the processing industry is not supported in Russia, and the infrastructure for separate waste collection is not being created. The priority is given to incineration today. Thus, the construction of four powerful waste incineration plants has been approved in the Moscow region. But this is the most expensive, ineffective and environmentally unsafe way to handle waste.

The example of Sweden confirms this. Several powerful incineration plants have been built here. This hinders the development of the processing industry. The Swedes are forced to buy garbage in other countries, enduring environmental risks, as incinerators produce large amounts of carbon dioxide.

What to do?

There are technologies in Russia that make it possible not to bury or incinerate, but to recycle glass, metal, plastic, paper, rubber, textiles, which make up a significant part of the waste. There are 432 processing plants in the Moscow Region alone. But their capacities are underutilized by an average of 30–40%.

Recycling plants have low profitability due to the quality of recyclable materials. For example, PET bottles coming from landfills are heavily contaminated and require costly cleaning. Therefore, it is important to correctly organize separate waste collection. Secondary resources collected by residents, clean and folded into containers for separate collection, will be more profitable to recycle.

Where can you start with segregated garbage collection?

1. Have some containers at home

Romualdo Januskevicius Development Director of the Center for Environmental Technologies

Collect wet food waste separately. They accumulate the fastest, so you'll be throwing them away more often. All plastic containers - bottles, yogurt jars, etc. - rinse with water and put in a separate bag. This will make them easier to recycle.

For paper - newspapers, magazines, advertising mailings, scribbled sheets - you can have a separate box. Once a month, you can pack it and put it in a waste container or take it to collection points.

Also, collect aluminum cans and glass containers separately. These simple steps will help you recycle more waste than if you put everything in one bag.

2. Install bins for separate waste collection in your yard

• Convene a general meeting of residents of the house, at which you need to decide on the introduction of separate waste collection in the local area. Make the case: Separate waste collection is beneficial because a typical mixed waste bin contains a lot of bulky, lightweight waste (such as paper and plastic). If you put the recyclables in a separate tank, you can save money: you need much fewer containers.
• Contact the management company with this solution and ask them to install separate collection containers.
• Offer a company that collects garbage from your yard to arrange for separate waste collection, or contract with another such company.

Detailed step-by-step instructions on how to organize separate waste collection in your home have been published.

3. Dispose of waste collected separately by yourself

On the Greenpeace website, you can find the nearest collection point for waste: paper, glass, plastic, batteries, tetra packs, light bulbs, household appliances and so on. However, while such points are not in all cities.

Will this help improve the situation?

Yes. New things can be made from the waste that is destroyed. For example, 400 aluminum cans are a new children's bike, 25 plastic bottles are a fleece jacket, a kilogram of newspapers is 10 rolls of toilet paper.

Experts have calculated What to do with garbage in Russia, that waste recycling will reduce the amount of landfilled garbage in our country by 75-80% by 2030. This means that the number of landfills will decrease. The new sphere will create new jobs, and fewer incinerators that poison the atmosphere will be built.