Photo by: Maksim Safaniuk / iStock
About 200 million tonnes of municipal solid waste are generated in Russia each year from the consumption of products. But this is only a small part of all rubbish. We have industrial waste — billions of tonnes a year. There is toxic waste — it is less than the household waste (a few tens of thousands of tons), but it is much more dangerous.
We need to act in the order of the waste management hierarchy. Start with waste prevention — there is a whole line of measures widely used around the world. The next level is to recycle. Then recycle and reuse waste as raw materials. Some of the waste can be used for energy purposes as fuel, but only with strict safety measures and modern technology. But we skip all these points and go straight to incineration and disposal at landfills/dumps.
There is no easy solution to Russia’s waste problem: it is unrealistic to incinerate such volumes of waste, and there is nowhere to put them. Today it is obvious that these two solutions do not work, and we simply do not deal with the others.
Cover photo: Sergey Fadeichev / TASS
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