Personal experience: How to sort garbage at home?
Separate waste disposal has been practiced abroad for a long time: containers with compartments for plastic, waste paper, food and toxic waste are installed not only by local authorities, but also by the citizens themselves at home. In Russia and Ukraine, eco-responsibility is developing slowly. And in St. Petersburg recently and completely began to eliminate containers for separate collection, established a few years ago: management companies did not come for them for months, and residents used it reluctantly. The correspondent of The Village St. Petersburg spoke with a man who sorts trash in his apartment and found out what it takes to collect separately at home.
Where to begin
When my girlfriend and I began to sort the garbage at home, we immediately made one big mistake - we didn’t think about what to do with it further. They just started putting waste paper, plastic and glass bottles in separate boxes and bags. When a whole mountain accumulated in a few weeks, I realized that I had absolutely no idea where to put all this. Remembering the school experience, I thought that it would not be difficult to donate waste paper or bottles. I carried out monitoring in my district - Primorsky - and I realized that it was impossible to do everything in one place.
For each type of waste has its own points of reception, and waste paper is taken only on weekdays from 12:00 to 14:00, which is very inconvenient. Bottles are also different: one type or color in one area, the other in another, plastic never was taken anywhere. As a result, I was accumulating a whole mountain of bottles and I did not know what to do with them. Then I learned about the monthly campaign “Thank you for the trees”, where you could immediately hand over everything that you have. Now it is no longer carried out, but there are a lot of one-off events.
Sorting mechanism
Now we are doing the simplest sorting: there are containers for plastic, glass, waste paper and, of course, food waste. They do not take up much space, just select a small corner. However, it was not possible to accustom all six tenants of the apartment to throw everything into different capacities. I started alone, and six months ago my sister joined me. At first, everyone doubted the rationality of our actions, but the media began to talk more about sorting, and the neighbors showed more understanding.
Personal experience: How to sort garbage at home ?
If you have a lot of energy and are willing to spend a little more time on it, you can separately collect paper and cardboard, divide glass by color, save metal separately, remove paper clips from tea bags or magazines. This, of course, will facilitate the work of processing enterprises, or even increase the earnings of those involved in recycling, but only if everyone else does. When one person in the city does this, there is no particular benefit.
Food waste is thrown into the ordinary trash. Some people use so-called vermicomposters at home - these are crates in which worms recycle food waste disposed of there: there is no odor and fertilizer is ready. Worms do not run away, everything is neat. There are other examples: one pensioner who is involved in the Garden on the Roof project decided to create a continuous cycle of consumption and processing on the roof of her apartment building. She put there the boxes for compost, where the whole house dumps its food waste. Recycled waste subsequently goes to fertilize the land in the garden.
Where to take
For starters wishing to sort the waste, I recommend finding out the location of the points of reception of glass, paper, food and hazardous waste near his house. I am an environmental engineer by training and did not know that. When you pass this stage, separate disposal no longer seems so problematic.
The easiest way to do this is with paper or waste paper: there are a lot of points and private companies that are ready to come and pick up all the waste paper from your office or home weighing 200 kilograms. Within the apartment is difficult. But one of my friends agreed with the management campaign, and now they collect cardboard and paper from the whole house, which special services then take out. The management campaign spends profit from recycling on the improvement of the local area and on technical needs.
I throw out metal trash like tin cans in a separate bag, and then I take it to the common trash can in the yard, from where it is taken almost instantly.
find out the location of the points of reception - and separate disposal does not seem so problematic.
With hazardous waste, especially with batteries, the situation is also gradually improving: they were allowed to collect any firms or any person in general. I can walk with a box around the city and collect them to pass. Many gas stations and shopping centers began to install special containers for collecting batteries, mercury lamps and medical waste. As an ecomobile, only stationary.
Now there are a lot of garbage disposal points in the city, they can be found on the Recyclemap.ru site map . There, points for receiving glass, paper, hazardous waste and even clothing are offered for each district. For me the most convenient is the action "Shared collection". Recently, they began to operate a mobile reception point - this Saturday they will go around the city for the second time to collect recyclables. There is another way for the most lazy or busy - ecotaxi , which they plan to launch soon. Judging by the reviews in social networks, many people liked the idea. If they do not overestimate the price, then for 200-300 rubles it will be an excellent alternative to the “Separate collection”.
Recycling
Most often, the waste is immediately sent to the landfill, bypassing the storage. In St. Petersburg there are two waste sorting stations, where workers select useful fractions from a common pile of waste. There, the percentage of recycling is very low: from 3 to 15% maximum. Abroad, up to 90% of garbage is sent for recycling.
You need to understand: no matter how cool, pre-sorting is necessary and very important. If the city does not do this, then we can do it. Food waste in any case must be separated from everything else: they stain, rot and spoil everything around. The same plastic bag can no longer be recycled if it is covered in banana and vinaigrette residues. Imagine how, on an assembly line, people try to pull out a piece of cardboard or a plastic bottle from all of our compressed garbage. This is unrealistic and no one will do it.
Education
The officials and the administration have their own opinion on this matter: they claim that nobody uses garbage containers for separate recycling and that is why they are being dismantled. And residents say they are ready to use if they create infrastructure and garbage will be taken out on time, and tank lids will not be locked. I heard somewhere that if at least 4% of the townspeople begin to do something, the rest will start to catch up to them. This will set the trend - such a marketing rule.
There is an opinion: “Here I am alone, what is the use of it then?” But if a person at least rinses the bottle and gives it up at a rally or at a reception center, this will already be a huge step. If only because it will attract the attention of other people. I went to school for a classroom lesson on ecology and told children about separate recycling and how to make the planet cleaner. Children of the fourth and fifth grades already understand the meaning of separate garbage collection and recycling. It became incomprehensible to me: if children understand, why do not adults do this? Maybe such an irresponsible generation, which should be replaced by growing eco-activists? We asked them why people didn’t do it then, and the students confirmed our theory: people are either lazy or simply don’t know where to take the garbage.
The authorities can affect the consciousness of citizens and their desire to properly dispose of waste. It cannot hold on to activists alone: they simply cannot control the whole city. In European countries, they have long held public awareness campaigns on how to use tanks, how to properly sort garbage. And then they just put everything. Russia will somehow come to this, but without the initiative of the state it will take much more time.
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