Red Tape Hot Box on recycling
Recently I heard on the news that our recycling system is improving and, needless to say, I was really glad to hear it. Voilá - finally we had stepped on to an ecologically sound road to getting rid of our garbage. This gave me another push to keep up the good work of segregating my garbage into four separate dustbins: one for aluminum (cans), another for plastic, another for paper and the rest. Trust me: the habit of segregating your own garbage right from the start doesn't come easily, especially when the temptation to choose the easier way - throwing everything into one bin - is often overwhelming. But a cleaner environment is, nevertheless, an even greater temptation. Thus I promised myself to carry on this titanic struggle.
However, my attitude towards our "improving" recycling environment has changed drastically, as, walking down Krucza street one day, I spotted a garbage truck that was emptying three different recycling containers into one. When I asked them why they were mixing together all this segregated waste which could easily be recycled, they said that it wasn't their fault - it was people who hadn't yet learned to segregate garbage and use recycling containers properly. They dispose of everything into one container, so it's all mixed anyways and this recycling thing is one big farce. After I went over data on recycled garbage I had to admit that those garbage guys were right. Recycled waste last year was minimal - around one percent of the total.
Meanwhile, in the west this is the one of the most rapidly growing lines of business in the last few years. Moreover, there are different laws that effectively minimize the waste produced. In Germany, a system of fees for plastic packages, known as Der Grüne Punkt, has resulted in more than 80 percent of plastic waste being recycled. More and more countries are trying to fight growing garbage dumps, and many of them can say that they have been quite successful. In Sweden the amount of plastic packages produced has decreased from 1.14 million tons to 900,000 tons in the last seven years. Here in Poland, unfortunately, the trend is just the opposite. We produce more and more unrecycled garbage every year. There are no effective laws that would limit the number of plastic containers and packages produced, nor are there directives that would make the manufacturers financially responsible for polluting our environment with their plastic wastes. When it comes to garbage, the problem is not only a question of money. It's a question of changing our attitudes towards recycling. Instead of ignoring the issue, we should consciously say "Poland, we have a problem..."
