Opinion Sur Joven

For those of us who live in big cities, urban waste is a reality we can confirm on every step we take. We inattentively generate tons and tons of it and see how the piles dangerously grow on the streets whenever waste collectors are on strike.

But not only can trash (or waste, according to the experts, although it’s the same) affect aesthetics, cleanness or our sense of smell. It’s also harmful for the environment. And even more if we don’t know what to do with it. How can environment care combine with throwing away all of our trash?

Waste is born waste

There are two main waste categories: organic and inorganic. The first category includes putrescible waste (mainly food), and the second one includes dry waste (plastic, wood, etc.). The current trend among those who are skilled in the subject is to separate dry waste from humid waste. The first kind is recyclable or reusable, whereas humid waste is only useful to make compost.

“The environment is always affected; ideally, it’d be better if we didn’t generate waste at all, but that’s impossible”, Ricardo Rollandi assures, avoiding any possibly optimistic assumption. He’s the chairman of ARS, the Argentine branch of the International Solid Waste Association.

Interviewed by Opinión Sur Joven, Rollandi explains that “ideally we should analyze the waste management process since products are elaborated until they become waste: since the raw material producer studies and markets its goods until the waste of said products is discarded”. This “comprehensive” view of waste includes three stages: the first one is the product’s trading and consumption. “For example, when toothpaste enters the market, its container already represents potential waste”, Rollandi comments.

The second stage involves the shopping process: “When you empty the supermarket bag at home, you’re already generating waste. Ideally, at home we should make a primary division between dry and humid, so that they can later be reused (that is, using the same element for the same use), reutilized (using the product again for a different purpose) or recycled (turning it into another product), which would represent the third stage”, he explains.

60% of the waste generated in Buenos Aires is organic, whereas the remaining 40% is formed by potentially recyclable waste. Each inhabitant in the city generates, in average, three and a half pounds of waste. But we shouldn’t be scared by this number; although it sounds like it’s a lot, there are even worse numbers: New York generates six and a half pounds per inhabitant.

One of the key issues regarding organic waste is where and how it can be discarded. Sanitary landfills are the best options, whereas the worst ones are open-air dumps. “Unlike dumps, landfills are provided with the necessary engineering to generate the lowest impact possible on the environment. Apart from affecting the landscape and generating odors, waste also has two fundamental consequences: it ruins groundwater and generates greenhouse effect gases when putrefying”, says our interviewee.

Landfills avoid said attacks to the ecosystem by protecting the soil with a membrane to prevent groundwater from being contaminated and collecting methane emissions through piping systems.

Said collected gas can also be used to generate electricity. The Norte 3 landfill, located in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, reutilizes it for self-provision of energy. This method is used on a greater scale in other places of the world: for example, in Barcelona (Spain), the heating system of Barrio Olímpico is fed with energy collected from a waste incinerator.

Urban (waste) legends

When it comes to waste, there are several myths or popular beliefs. For example: if we collect old batteries and turn them into a park bench covered with concrete, we can save the world from this scourge; plastics are the worst devil at the waste hell; if we throw banana peel into a river nothing happens, but God forbid that someone throws a bottle in it; etc.

The battery issue is the most popular one. We all know, or have once heard at least, that throwing a battery into a river or a lake is tremendously contaminating because its chemical components decompose with oxide and contaminate the water.

“Some people form large blocks with batteries and then give them a particular use, like putting them into a bucket, covering them with concrete and turning them into a seat. That’s wrong, because when we stop using them they still have a third of their energy, and if many of them are locked into an encapsulated container, they can generate a chemical and temperature reaction, and generate explosions”, warns Rollandi, perhaps astonishing an unaware reader.

Daniel Santellán, an electrical engineer specialized in business management at the consulting firm EcoGestionar agrees with the warning and recommends not to accumulate batteries and expose them to high temperatures. “The best choice is using containers especially designed for these types of elements, which are properly treated afterwards. Many waste collection companies have these containers. We must never mix batteries with other types of waste, because that makes classification difficult”, he adds.

For the chairman of ARS, the battery disposal problem “must be solved between companies and the State. They have to be restored to the market once used, because they can be useful for the manufacturing of new ones”. However, he says that “today, as a particular consumer the only thing you can do is throw them away, since there isn’t an organized reutilization system”.

Regarding electronic gadgets in general, which are abundant in this technological era we’re living in, Santellán recommends taking them to companies specialized in recycling them, thus recovering elements that can be reutilized.

“Some of them are very valuable: gold, silver, cupper and other metals can be recovered. But, to make it profitable, large volumes must be recycled”, he explains to Opinión Sur Joven.

Technological waste, according to the experts’ jargon, is called ‘scrap’, so there’s a homonymous Argentine company that collects it.

Another myth says plastic is the environment’s worst enemy and that leaving a plastic bottle in the river is a deadly sin. “The bottle can keep floating on the water for years and years; it’ll go down and up the river. Throwing it away is wrong, of course, but it doesn’t decompose. Instead, food thrown into the river consumes the water’s oxygen and causes degradation of the water”, says Rollandi.

On the other hand, plastic waste can be immediately turned into raw material, so its wasting process is less complicated than the one of putrescible waste. Anyway, it’d be much better if shopping bags were made of wood or fabric instead of plastic.

For example, 80% of the plastic to make bottles produced in Argentina is exported to China. The bottle is destroyed and turned into the raw material used to produce fleece, mattresses, pillows and sleeping bags. It’s a way of reutilizing them and, at the same time, doing business.

It starts at home

Many people are aware of the fact that environment care begins literally at home. Our home is the place where we discard most of the things we don’t use anymore and, if not at home, at work. Ingrid lives in Buenos Aires city and works at the Human Resources department of one of the largest companies in Argentina, where materials such as paper are probably abundant. However, her “go-green” awareness, as she defines it, helps her take advantage of them.

“In the emails we send we have included the phrase ‘If possible, do not print this email’, to avoid using paper whenever possible”, she explains, and she talks to Opinión Sur Joven about other useful pieces of advice when it comes to waste management: “put your batteries in a glass jar and throw them away, so that they don’t contact water”, or “throw your cooking oil in a bottle so it doesn’t contaminate the water where the sewage ends”. Ingrid, who’s been environment-conscious since she was a child, remembers when she scolded her dad on the street: “Stop throwing garbage to the floor because your grandchildren will suffer the consequences”, and she proudly says today her dad puts his garbage in his pockets and says to her “for my grandchildren”.

She’s made a difference at work in several aspects. For example, they collaborate with the Garrahan children’s hospital by collecting paper that’s usually discarded and handing it to them, so they can recycle it.

In that sense, Rollandi proposes an idea that would be useful all over the world: “We should demand that the whole State’s paperwork be made on recycled paper, and that each paper signed by the authorities, from the President to district authorities, be recycled. Logging forests to make new paper is crazy”.

From her particular situation, Ingrid supports the utopia for anyone who wants to hear it: “Some people do what they can from their positions to protect the environment, and if more people do it, we’re going to be stronger”.