How residents of the Moscow region can learn to sort garbage at home. Separate waste collection

Every day more and more people are concerned about sorting waste. Here and there, articles from various activists and members of various movements constantly pop up about mandatory waste sorting.

Just in the parking spot in front of the entrance, taking up three parking spaces. Residents of high-rise buildings understand perfectly well how important parking spaces in front of the house are if there is no underground parking. There are never enough of these places... Moreover, it is important to organize access for garbage trucks to these containers. For your information, there are several machines that collect garbage. Every day, garbage is collected by one vehicle equipped to accept containers with regular garbage. All other containers are emptied by other machines, each of them is equipped with special grips for its “own” container, be it glass, plastic or paper. These are all different cars. There are four of them in total. On some days, only a car comes to collect regular garbage. Sometimes two come. There are days when they all come at once. And this is at almost every entrance. Through one entrance, to be precise. That is, not only did people, when buying apartments in a building where there was a garbage chute, lose it, but they also have to walk across half the yard with bags to take out the garbage. This adds quite a bit of discomfort. Imagine - morning, leaving home for work with a child (going to kindergarten or school). In one hand there is a bag for work, in the other hand there is a bag or several (we sort...) bags of garbage, a child is nearby, in the elevator there is the same neighbor with two bags of garbage in his hands... and on the first floor, when exiting the elevator, we are greeted by scattered the garbage on the half-bag couldn't stand it for someone... It's a common thing. The neighbor complains “what kind of people are…” pointing at the garbage. And in my thoughts, “Yes, I did the same thing yesterday, I took out the trash and the bag couldn’t stand it…”. There is nothing to collect the spilled garbage and no time. So the sight of scattered garbage in the entrance is a common occurrence. The picture is the same for containers. Often the containers are overfilled and garbage is piled next to the containers and the wind blows all the garbage around the yard...Dirty. If someone parked the car and blocked the approach to the container, it is not uncommon to see a bag of garbage on the hood. A friendly neighbor in this way makes it clear that there is no need to block the path to the container. Cats and dogs unceremoniously tear up abandoned bags and thus contribute to the spread of garbage throughout the yard. The number of stray dogs and cats is growing exponentially. (There is a place to spend time and something to eat.) In the summer, during the watermelon season, the containers leak. Stink, of course. In the morning, the employees of the garbage collection machine knock on the wheels of the cars that block the path to the garbage collection container, so that the alarm will go off and the owner, upon hearing, will remove the car. Then another car arrives to collect the container of paper. History repeats itself...Noisy. In winter, the situation gets worse when snow is removed and equipment shovels snowdrifts. It's not always easy to get to the containers. We climb on the ice. Women in fur coats and civilian shoes with bags of garbage too... In general, it feels like being in a village, where the toilet is on the street. I was somehow lucky enough to go to my grandmother in the winter... And in the evening we watched on TV how a nuclear reactor in some Fukushima failed, and dirty water got into the ocean. Thus, irreparable damage has been caused to the ecology of the world. And about the oil spilled into the ocean by Shelom... There is damage, so much damage! And what about enterprises that dump liquids into rivers and smoke into the sky... and diesel engines on cars smoke black soot... And by the way, what is saving the environment when sorting waste? Will there be less of it (garbage)? Why are residents of houses forced to endure discomfort?

At every landfill, if anyone has ever observed, there are people working to sort garbage. Yes Yes. They sort paper, plastic and glass from all incoming cars.

They are hired by enterprising people who dispose of garbage for money. This is their business. They make money from sorting garbage.

Other enterprising people place containers near our homes to separate waste collection for further disposal. This is their business.

Thus, under the guise of saving the environment, we, residents of high-rise buildings, are involved in business as free labor. Very profitable! You can breathe out - yes, it’s not a pity to help us, it’s a good thing, your hands won’t fall off - the main thing is ecology on the planet!
The garbage removed from the house is paid by the residents according to the bills of the company that deals with garbage removal. The tariff is calculated based on the norms of household waste produced by a person in cubic meters. There are such norms. I found out myself. With the advent of additional containers for separate waste collection, the norms and tariffs do not change. Of course, the waste removal company only benefits from the appearance of additional containers!
Residents pay for garbage per cubic meter and provide additional income to the company that disposes of the garbage. In addition, we help entrepreneurs earn money by collecting paper, glass, and plastic. And all this with a smile and shouts about ecology on the planet! Yes, how much of this money is there, it’s not a pity! Why waste time on trifles?
Yes, due to separate waste collection, the demand for garbage bags has increased threefold in stores selling them. And for some reason no one thinks that they can simply ban the use of cellophane everywhere. Leave it where you can’t do without it. Use paper bags made from recycled materials for packaging, at least in markets. Establish a high excise tax on polyethylene. The price of the package will become so high that not everyone will buy a new one. They will throw away less.
My point is that few people care about reducing the harm caused by manufacturers of harmful substances. But there is agitation for separate waste collection in every city! Right at the government level. Doesn't it seem strange to anyone?
I would like to add that

Modern society produces many times more waste than, for example, 100 years ago. The abundance of all kinds of packaging, as well as the use of slowly decomposing materials, leads to the growth of landfills. If ordinary gray paper can completely rot in 1-2 years without causing any harm to the environment, then beautiful chemical polyethylene will be intact even after 10 years. What is being done to effectively combat waste?

Sorting idea

Household waste, which arrives in huge quantities at landfills every day, is very diverse. Literally everything can be found among them. However, if you study the composition of garbage, you can understand that many of its units are completely reusable. What does it mean?

For example, aluminum beer cans can be melted down and the melt used to make some other aluminum items. It's the same with plastic bottles. Plastic takes an extremely long time to decompose, so you shouldn’t hope that the mineral water container will disappear in a year or two. This is a synthetic material that does not exist in nature and is not susceptible to the destructive effects of moisture, low temperature and other natural factors. But a plastic bottle can also be melted down and reused.

How does sorting happen?

Garbage is sorted at special sorting plants. This is an enterprise where garbage trucks come from the city and where all the conditions are created to quickly extract from several tons of waste what can still be recycled.

Waste sorting complexes are designed in different ways. Somewhere exclusively manual labor is used, somewhere complex mechanisms are used. In the case of manual sampling of useful materials, the garbage moves along a conveyor along which workers stand. When they see an item suitable for further processing (for example, a plastic bottle or milk carton), they take it from the conveyor and place it in a specialized container.

Automatic lines work a little differently. As a rule, debris from the car body falls into some kind of device for sifting out earth and stones. Most often, this is a vibrating screen - an installation that, due to strong vibration, “sifts” the contents of a huge container, causing objects of a certain size to fly down.

Next, metal objects are removed from the garbage. This is done in the process of passing the next batch under the magnetic plate. And the process ends manually, since even the most cunning equipment can miss valuable waste. What remains on the assembly line is checked by employees and “values” are removed.

Sorting and separate collection

Most often, these two terms are one and the same in the minds of ordinary people. In fact, sorting refers to the movement of waste through a sorting complex. And separate collection is the initial placement of waste into separate containers.

Separating household waste into “categories” is the task of ordinary citizens. This is what they do in all developed countries and they are trying to do it in Russia. However, all experiments on installing separate containers in the cities of our country often go neither shaky nor uneven. Rarely will a resident throw a milk carton into a yellow bin and a candy box into a blue bin. More often than not, household waste is stuffed into a common bag and thrown into the first container that comes along. It must be said that this action is sometimes done “halfway.” A bag of garbage is left on the lawn, at the entrance door, on the side of the road, etc.

Grade

1. Collect only as clean raw materials (without food residues and fats), the type of which you can confidently determine (there is a code).
2. All debris should be compacted so that it takes up less space.

The following categories of raw materials are valuable for processing

Paper.

Cardboard, office paper, newspaper and magazine products, notebooks, albums, postcards, any paper packaging, etc.

How to prepare?

Compact it flat and put it in a separate bag.

• napkins
• disposable paper cups
• parchment
• paper contaminated with food, grease, and liquid.

Attention! Tetra Pak packaging is classified as “plastic”!

Metal.

Aluminum and tin cans, metal lids.

How to prepare?

Rinse cans. Aluminum cans should be compacted as much as possible. Place everything metal in a separate bag.

Glass.

Whole and broken bottles. From drinks, medicines, cosmetics.

How to prepare?

Rinse the bottles of drinks, drain the water, put them in a separate bag, and tie them.

Not recyclable:

heat-resistant and impact-resistant glass.

Plastic box.

How to prepare?

Pay attention to the marking - on the package, in the form of a triangle with a number (from 1 to 7) and / or letters:

• PET or PETE
• HDPE or PEHD
• LDPE or PE or PELD

The following cannot be accepted or processed:

If there is no marking (recycling code) on the packaging, throw such packaging into general trash.

Resource-valuable waste that is interesting for recycling are the following types of packaging:

It is worth rinsing the packaging of dairy products and juices and compacting it so that it becomes flat.

The organization “Ukraine without Smith” also accepts certain types of hazardous waste - batteries (must be placed in a PET bottle with a lid).

Attention! If the bottle has a dispenser or aerator with a metal spring and tube, the dispenser cannot be recycled, so please unscrew it first and throw it in the general trash.

1. Transfer to the organization "Ukraine without Smith" for sorting only those raw materials whose category you can determine (you know for sure that this or that plastic belongs to a certain category or you found the corresponding marking on the product itself) and can be distributed into the following fractions:
2. PET (PET or “1” in a triangle), bottles from sweet drinks, water, beer, dairy bottles labeled PET, some household chemical bottles, usually transparent, and the like.
   Attention! If the bottle has a dispenser or aerator with a metal spring and straw, then the dispenser is not recyclable. Please unscrew it first and throw it in the general trash.
3. Polyethylene in film form (HPDE, LDPE or “2” or “4” in a triangle). Disposable bags, large bags from supermarkets, stretch film, bubble wrap for packaging, milk bags, kefir bags, bags of loaves and the like. Attention! Packages from Nova Poshta cannot be recycled due to the chalk content they contain.
4. Polyethylene in the form of bottles (HPDE (2) and PE (4) with the corresponding number in the triangle). Bottles of household chemicals, some packaging for dairy products. Attention! If the bottle has a dispenser or aerator with a metal spring and tube, the dispenser cannot be recycled, so please unscrew it first and throw it in the general trash.
5. Polypropylene (PP or "5" in triangle). Reusable containers (containers, buckets), disposable buckets in supermarkets that look like cups, disposable transparent cups, sometimes containers for household chemicals, and other products that are designated PP.
6. Polystyrene (PS or 6 in triangle). Jars of some dairy products, disposable containers from supermarkets (sometimes these containers may be made of PET or PP), and other products labeled PS.
7. Metal. Aluminum and tin cans, metal lids, and the like.
8. Paper: cardboard, office paper, paper packaging, etc. cannot be recycled. Plus receipts, napkins, disposable paper cups, parchment, paper contaminated with food, grease, and liquid. Attention! Tetra Pak must be sorted into a bag!
9. Tetra Pak, Elo-Pak, etc. - juices, dairy products. Attention! The lid and neck do not need to be torn out of it, but can be left on the package. Seal the bag so that it looks flat.
10. Sort caps from dairy product packages and PET bottles into a bag.
11. Hazardous waste - batteries (must be placed in a PET bottle with a cap). Attention!

If you have any questions or would like to take part in an offline/online master class on waste sorting, send an email with the subject “sorting” to [email protected].

Remember! In fact, sorting garbage is a matter of habit, and only at first it seems like something burdensome. It only takes a week to check everything thrown into the trash bin and the system will start working. For inspiration, examples on organizing the garbage issue in the kitchen walls of countries where waste sorting is commonplace.

For those new to sorting, the Zero Waste Ukraine project has prepared a complete selection of sorted waste (packaging), which makes sense to collect separately for further processing.

Two basic rules for sorting waste:
1. Collect and sort only clean raw materials (without food or fat residues), the type of which you can confidently determine (there is a recycling code in the triangle).
2. The whole thing needs to be compressed so that it takes up less space.

Paper

Cardboard, office paper, newspaper and magazine products, notebooks, albums, postcards, any paper packaging, etc.

How to prepare?
Fold into a flat shape and place in a separate package.

The following cannot be accepted for processing:
receipts, napkins, disposable paper cups, parchment, paper contaminated with food, grease, liquid.

Attention! Tetra Pak type packaging belongs to the “ ” category!

Metal

Aluminum and tin cans, metal lids.

How to prepare?
Rinse cans.
Aluminum cans should be compressed as much as possible.
Place everything metal in a separate bag.

Glass

Whole and broken bottles. From drinks, medicines, cosmetics.

How to prepare?
Rinse the contents of the bottle from drinks, drain the water, put it in a separate bag, and tie it.

Not recyclable:
crystal
heat-resistant and impact-resistant glass.

Plastic box

How to prepare?
Pay attention to the markings on the packaging, which looks like a triangle with a number (from 1 to 7) and/or letters:
1 - PET or PETE
2 - HDPE or PEHD
3 - PVC
4 - LDPE or PE or PELD
5 - PP
6 - PS
7 - other

The following cannot be accepted or processed:
If there is no marking (recycling code) on the packaging or it is marked No. 3 or 7, throw such packaging into the general trash.

Resource-valuable waste that is interesting for recycling are the following types of packaging:

Bottles PET or PETE or No. 1 in the triangle

Bottles and vials HDPE, PEHD, PE or 2 in a triangle (some types of packaging for household chemicals and dairy products)

This type also includes covers

They must be placed in a separate bag

Containers, bottles, PP vials(reusable food containers, some types of packaging for household chemicals, cosmetics)

Tetra Pak. Packaging for juices and dairy products.
We ask you to wash packaging for dairy products and juices and fold it so that it becomes flat.

Batteries(must be placed in a PET bottle with a cap)

Tips for sorting fans with experience.

Submit for sorting only those raw materials whose category you can determine (you know for sure that the plastic belongs to a specific category or you found the appropriate marking on the product itself), and you can divide it into the following fractions:

PET(PET or 1 in a triangle), bottles for sweet drinks, water, beer, dairy products marked PET, some bottles for household chemicals, usually transparent.

Attention!

Polyethylene in film form(HPDE, LDPE or 2 or 4 in triangle).

Disposable bags, large bags from supermarkets, stretch film, bubble film for packaging, milk and kefir bags, bags of loaves.

Attention! Some bags, for example from the Ukrainian “Nova Poshta”, cannot be recycled due to the chalk content they contain.

Polyethylene in the form of bottles(HPDE(2) and PE(4) with the corresponding number in the triangle).
Bottles for household chemicals, some packaging for dairy products.

Attention! If the bottle has a dispenser or aerator with a metal spring and tube, the dispenser cannot be recycled, so please first unscrew it and throw it in the general trash.

Polypropylene(PP or 5 in triangle).
Reusable containers (containers, buckets), disposable buckets in supermarkets that look like cups, disposable transparent cups, sometimes containers from household chemicals, and other products bearing the PP mark.

Polystyrene(PS or 6 in a triangle).
Jars for some dairy products, disposable containers from supermarkets (sometimes these containers may be made of PET or PP), and other products bearing the PS mark.

Metal
Aluminum and tin cans, metal lids.

Paper
Cardboard, office paper, paper packaging.

The following items cannot be recycled: receipts, napkins, disposable paper cups, parchment, paper contaminated with food, grease, and liquids.

Attention! Tetra Pak must be sorted into a separate bag!

Tetra Pak, Elo-Pak etc. - juices, dairy products.
Attention! The lid and neck do not need to be removed from it and can be left on the package.

Seal the bag so that it looks flat.

Caps for dairy products and PET bottles.

Sort into a separate package.

Attention!

A) If you can't identify the type of plastic because it's not labeled, we probably won't be able to find it either, so alas, throw it in the general trash.

B) Products made from different types of material must be divided into these types. For example, paper packaging with clear plastic must be separated into paper and clear plastic; if it is not labeled, it will not be recycled. The same applies to household chemical dispensers, which consist of metal and plastic and, unfortunately, are also not recyclable.

C) Raw materials from points 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 must be packaged in separate bags to simplify further sorting.
Selecting disposable bags, disposable containers and dairy jars from the general waste pile is a very expensive and time-consuming process. If you want to be confident in the processing of this raw material, we ask you to collect all recyclable materials of the same type in one package, for example, a “pack of bags” containing at least 15 disposable “T-shirt” bags is appropriate for sorting.

D) If plastic packaging for cheese slices, for example, has a paper sticker, it also cannot be recycled through this sticker, so it needs to be cut off.

D) Before entering the extruder (where polymers are produced), all raw materials are washed. In Europe, raw materials are washed in cold and then in hot water. In Ukraine, unfortunately, only in cold water (hot water washing technology is very expensive for us). As a result, all raw materials that contain fat are doomed to remain fatty, and then significantly reduce the quality of the final product. THEREFORE, it is better to throw the greasy bag in the trash, and be sure to rinse the bottle or container of dairy products. Bottles of carbonated drinks and beer do not need to be washed.

E) Polypropylene in the form of film (packaging for cookies, ice cream, chips, cereals and pasta) is still rarely collected. Unfortunately, there are no enterprises that agree to accept it for processing. This film is called “rustle” because of the loud sound when it is crushed; it does not stretch and breaks easily if cut. The most famous polypropylene film is tape and files;)

If you have any questions or would like to take part in an offline/online master class on waste sorting, please send an email with the subject “sorting” to

Our country is mired in garbage. More than 50 million tons of waste are sent to landfills every year. And every year this number is growing. Almost all waste in Russia is buried in landfills, contaminating the water we drink and releasing hazardous substances into the air we breathe. Every year more and more land is allocated for landfills. Some cities are proposing the construction of expensive and extremely dangerous waste incineration plants as an alternative to landfills. They poison the air and turn relatively harmless waste into toxic ash, which also has to be buried. The share of waste recycling in Russia is at the level of 3-5%, which is an order of magnitude less than in European countries. For example, in Germany 65% ​​of waste is recycled, and in San Francisco - more than 80%.

Just a few facts about garbage:

. 100,000 marine animals and 1,000,000 birds die every year from mistaking plastic for food;
. 1 battery pollutes 20 square meters of land, and this is the habitat of one hedgehog and two moles;
. 60 kg of waste paper is saved by one tree;
. landfills in Russia already occupy a space equal to the area of ​​Switzerland;
. if a tower with a base of 1x1 meter is built from the waste that Russian residents throw out every year, then it will be possible to climb up to the Moon;
. every year in Russia the territory for landfills increases by an area equal to Moscow and St. Petersburg combined;
. each of us throws out 400 kg of garbage per year.

What is separate garbage collection?

Separate waste collection is a system in which waste is separated into several types in order to then reuse it and produce new products from it at special plants. This approach significantly reduces the negative impact on the environment that would be caused by discarded garbage rotting in landfills, and also reduces the need to extract (including non-renewable) natural resources to produce products from scratch. Material recycling is about saving energy and resources and preventing air and water pollution.

In most yards, garbage collection bins now look like this

or like this

These are containers for separate waste collection in Arkhangelsk.

Yellow - for plastic, glass and aluminum. Blue - for paper and cardboard. The bright colors make them stand out and stand out, and the pictures and labels make them easy to sort. At almost all sites, such containers are locked and have small (often not very convenient) holes. This is done for the purpose of anti-vandal protection.
In Severodvinsk Containers for separate waste collection look like this

or like this

In Arkhangelsk, the separate waste collection project began in November 2014. There are currently more than 40 container sites in the city. You can view the addresses of sites with containers for separate waste collection at EcoCarte Arkhangelsk region.

What to recycle?

Listed below is the range of waste accepted for processing in Arkhangelsk. For Severodvinsk it is somewhat wider.

Plastic:

. PET bottles for water, drinks + caps;
. bottles of detergents (shampoos, household chemicals);
. packing tape;
. plastic canisters;
. plastic fruit boxes
Caps and labels do not need to be removed. Vegetable oil bottles are not accepted.

Glass:

. glass bottles;
. jars (glass containers).
The bottles do not need to be washed, the labels do not need to be removed. Only energy-saving LED light bulbs can be thrown away.

Metal:

. aluminum cans;
. cans.
Aerosol bottles (hairspray, air freshener) are not accepted.

Paper:

. newspapers magazines;
. books;
. carton boxes;
. office paper.
Juice and dairy product packaging (tetra-pack) is not accepted, as it is very difficult and economically unfeasible to recycle. Paper towels, napkins, paper egg containers, and toilet paper rolls are also not accepted, as these are the final stages of paper recycling.

For convenience, there is such a colorful visual diagram.