First, we must admit that the problem of garbage is a problem in ourselves, in our culture and upbringing, the collapse of the USSR and the rather difficult times of the 90s-2000s played an important role in this. In Soviet times, handing over waste paper or metal was common among pioneers, and plastics were almost non-existent at the time.
Now, plastic, phones, computers, household appliances and cars have become many times more, and most importantly, it is more affordable, now it is easier to throw away, and there is almost no one to collect and hand over, and most importantly, it is not particularly profitable. If you look at the streets, you can immediately notice the main pollutants are plastic bags or packaging, bottles like plastic or glass, car tires, etc.
And so how can the problem be solved in Russia, of course, everyone knows the answer, this is recycling and recycling, but how to instill this culture in people in Russia?
You need to start from school, from the first grades there should be an Ecology lesson, enough once every 2 weeks, in this lesson you can talk about global environmental problems, the dangers of garbage, that plastic and glass practically do not decompose in the environment, conduct lessons in the open air, walking around or around the schoolyard and picking up scattered trash, making the world around you cleaner. Teach children to separate waste collection, thrifty use of water resources, teach them to save water, electricity, gas, talk about global warming, instill a love of nature, etc.
This generation will grow up and will take a more responsible approach to the environment and the topic of waste.
Now, what can be done right now, first you need to understand that until the sorting or delivery of garbage becomes profitable for citizens, it will be very difficult to solve the problem if there is no difference in throwing the plastic bottle out the car window or into the general garbage bag, or into a special sorting tank for plastic, people will do as they like and often as it is easier for them at the moment. Therefore, first you need to divide the garbage into several categories, first into complex garbage, high-tech, for example, cars, household appliances, furniture, telephones, etc. (let's call it the 1st category) and for ordinary garbage it is PET, packaging, bags, etc. (let's call it the 2nd category).
The first category of waste cannot be simply disposed of, the equipment must be disassembled into its component parts, for this special sites (collection points) will be required, where all old equipment can be handed over, etc. For this to be profitable, it is necessary to lay in the product even during its production, sale or import into Russia, a utilization tax, or an environmental tax on recycling, for example: there is a TV, its cost is 20 thousand rubles, a tax of 2,000 rubles is added to this amount, and when importing or selling goods, according to the barcode of this product, it is entered into the database and the amount of 2,000 rubles goes to a special account, then after 10 years this product becomes obsolete or completely out of order, the citizen brings it to the 1st category garbage collection point and receives, for example, 1000 rubles is 50% of the tax,the other half goes to the organization dealing with the disposal of this object, having taken it apart into components its parts must be recycled.
Further, it is necessary to stimulate producers to use raw materials from the secondary market, i.e. for example, plastic pellets obtained from recycled raw materials will not be subject to an environmental tax, and plastic from petroleum will have an environmental tax. This tax should make it profitable to buy recycled plastic over pure plastic from oil, similarly for other elements of glass, paper, etc.
Now about the garbage of the 2nd category, this is plastic packaging, bags, bottles, etc. anything that is disposable and very cheap. To begin with, it is necessary to stimulate manufacturers to abandon plastic and polyethylene as much as possible, replacing it with paper or degradable bioplastic, because fifty percent of packages can refuse single-use plastic as such, these are plastic cups and tubes and bags, etc. You can again stimulate the Environmental Tax, for example, a plastic bag now costs 5 rubles, and a paper bag is 15 rubles, of course it is easier for people to buy and then throw out a plastic bag, but if the price is equal or the plastic bag costs 30 rubles and a paper bag 15, then people will be more profitable buy paper counterparts or reuse plastic products.
As for PET, these are plastic bottles, it is impossible to replace them with paper ones, or it is difficult to make such a quantity from bioplastic, so it is necessary to add a recycling tax on each plastic bottle, for example, the cost of a milk bottle is 50 rubles, we add 3 rubles for recycling, i.e. e. the cost will be 53 rubles, when a person brings this bottle to the reception point he will be given 1 ruble for it, taking into account that there are usually many such bottles, tens or hundreds, there will be people, and they already exist, who will just collect these plastic bottles and take it to the collection points. The remainder of the tax should go to support plastic recycling companies, and as mentioned earlier, granules from this recyclable material should not be subject to an additional Environmental Tax, like plastic granules from oil.which will make it profitable to buy recycled materials.
Prices and amounts are given as an example, it is quite possible that somewhere on PET the environmental tax will be more, for example, 5 rubles, somewhere less, the goal is to make it profitable to return this PET container to the collection point. There will certainly be people who will collect and hand over this container, PET.
Of course, it is impossible to count everything by the piece, many products consist of many small plastic parts, these can be children's toys, plastic windows, pipes, or small products such as auto pens for writing, therefore, even at the production stage, the raw materials for these products are themselves. I mean plastic or plastics should be subject to an Environmental Tax based on weight, for example a plastic pen, the factory produces thousands of such pens per day, 1 ton of pure plastic is used daily, this is a ton of plastic and should be taxed if used plastic from recycled materials, it is not taxed. Further, at the reception point, people can simply bring a bag of plastic, and receive compensation depending on the weight, in general, by analogy with accepting scrap metal.
The options described above should solve the waste problem by 90%, making waste not garbage, but valuable raw materials. The downside of the coin will be an increase in the price of almost all goods, but this is only a few percent, in most cases the increase in prices is offset by the rise of the processing industry, and also stimulates the majority of citizens to reusable use. Those. if it is believed that the most vulnerable stratum of society will suffer from the rise in prices, these are pensioners and the poor, then it is in this case that they can easily adapt to new conditions, and perhaps they will not even notice the increase in prices, since the same plastic or paper bags can be used several times, and PET or glass bottles can be returned and part of the money returned for this. The same applies to waste of the first category, people will not just throw away old equipment,but they will hand over it and receive money for it.
In addition, it will be possible to make subsidies for pensioners so that they do not pay for the removal of solid waste, this amount will be compensated by the received Environmental Tax, I think these funds should be enough.
But there is one more difficulty, the waste collection system, which is now adopted in our country, is based on a fixed monthly payment for waste (MSW), and people who are concerned about the environment and who have less waste will still have to pay as much as those who he does not think about ecology at all, in other words, the disposal of garbage as recyclable materials, ordinary bottles for which you can get 10-20 rubles in profit, most Russians will simply not be interested and they will throw everything away in one package, and not the fact that someone will do it later sorting it. Therefore, ideally there should be another difficult, but very important measure, it is necessary that people pay depending on the amount of garbage thrown out, and the easiest way to implement this is with the help of special garbage bags that can be made from biodegradable bioplastic, i.e.so that garbage can be thrown away only in special packages, the cost of which will include the MSW tax. Garbage collectors, on the other hand, will pick up only these packages, perhaps they will have a barcode tag to keep track of the number of collected packages and thus the garbage collection company will make a profit, it is simply unprofitable for them to take ordinary packages. This is difficult to implement at the moment, perhaps in big cities, where people are more conscious, such a system is easier to use, since a problem may arise when citizens simply start throwing garbage bags wherever they get and, accordingly, pay nothing at all.to keep track of the number of collected packages and thus the garbage collection company will make a profit, it is simply not profitable for them to take regular packages. This is difficult to implement at the moment, perhaps in large cities, where people are more conscious, such a system is easier to use, since a problem may arise when citizens simply start throwing garbage bags wherever they go and, accordingly, pay nothing at all.to keep track of the number of collected packages and thus the garbage collection company will make a profit, it is simply not profitable for them to take regular packages. This is difficult to implement at the moment, perhaps in large cities, where people are more conscious, such a system is easier to use, since a problem may arise when citizens simply start throwing garbage bags wherever they go and, accordingly, pay nothing at all.
In conclusion, we can say that the problem of waste is being successfully solved in many countries of the world, such as Sweden, etc., we have a lot to learn and what to borrow, but the main thing is to start with educating young people and instill a culture of respect for nature and its resources in our citizens, try to explain to people that the world we live in, our country depends on each of us.