PARADOX

My grandmother Govhar, a very wise woman born in the town of Samaxi, would make us take out the rubbish literally on a daily basis, saying that keeping it at home causes disease. German doctors from a clinic of infectious diseases and pneumology in Berlin have recently warned that keeping organic wastes may be harmful for health. For instance, the fungi that emerge at the time of decay may cause skin and breathing problems. 

Even a brief opening of the lid of a waste-bin scatters the spores capable of harming the lungs when inhaled. The more spores are inhaled, the more severe the consequences. According to research, spores scattered in the air may cause allergic reactions, asthma, fever and itching. One of the more serious problems that emerge at the time of organic decay is called aspergilloma, which is a fungus living in the lungs.

We are often appalled at the hazardous discharges and emissions of industrial enterprises and transport vehicles, but fail to notice what is happening right under our feet. It is always possible to find someone responsible for industrial pollution, but it is almost never possible to hold someone accountable for the rubbish left outside the door, in the street or in recreational areas. 

I still remember a situation that took place in the first years of the AIOC operation. When work was under way to establish the location of the future terminal, it was determined that there was a small pipe from which some oily fluid was being discharged at one of the potential locations. In fact, this is where the terminal is situated now. To find out what that fluid was, an engineer from the contracting organization Fugro was sent to examine it. He turned out to be Czech, while I accompanied him as a representative of the AIOC environmental department. We had already taken samples of the fluid and were getting ready to return to the city when a gust of wind carried away a large napkin that was completely stained. Putting everything aside, my companion rushed after the napkin. To be honest, I felt somewhat awkward at first. There was no-one around us for many hundreds of metres, only a desert steppe. The wind was driving prickles and plastic bags, while this grown man was trying to chase a napkin. When he finally got hold of it, I said it looked quite funny from outside. He replied that we were all responsible for nature and must prevent its pollution. And this man was expecting to leave Baku, possibly for good. Frankly speaking, this was a good lesson for me and that episode still stands out in my memory quite vividly, especially when I see people throwing rubbish right and left.  

Non-hazardous wastes 

The SDW acronym means solid domestic waste. Domestic waste is generated as a result of human and non-industrial activities. This includes street rubbish, food remains, by-products of wood such as cardboard and paper, unserviceable household appliances, tree branches and leaves, etc. There are also hazardous domestic wastes, such as household chemicals, accumulators, mercury lamps and batteries. 

Most of the consumer wastes around the world are disposed of at SDW landfills. The landfills used to be called refuse dumps but this simple and expressive word has recently been replaced with the combination of "sanitary landfill". It means something in marked contrast to traditional dumps. Their essence is that the burial of SDW using special technologies does not cause any harm to the environment. Unfortunately, there are no fully-fledged sanitary landfills not only in Azerbaijan but in Russia and other CIS countries either. 

Digression into history 

Historians believe that the first known dump emerged three millennia BC. It was located on the island of Crete. Rubbish was dumped in large pits which were then filled with earth. Almost two and a half millennia ago officials of ancient Athens in Greece ordered people to take rubbish to a distance of at least 1.5 kilometres from the city gates. Our ancestors did not have a problem of waste. In fact, there was even no such word at the time. But in the late 19th century, industrial development resulted in the appearance of the SDW notion in major industrial cities and the problem of taking out and disposing of the waste emerged on the agenda. As production of consumer goods gathered pace, waste started piling up and causing discomfort. The acute question of where the waste should be taken came up. Considering the poor development of the raw material base, entrepreneurs lacked the resources for production and waste was disposed of as secondary material. It was rag-and-bone men who laid the groundwork for the waste disposal industry. They walked from one neighbourhood to another and bought unwanted clothes, paper, wood, tin and glass containers for a certain sum. Rubbish collectors were only left the remains of the lumber that was not usable or disposable. However, the volume of such lumber increased by the year, and the population soon faced the question of what to do with the waste. Over time the authorities took various measures to resolve the rubbish problem and in 1874 the first waste disposal plant was built in Nottingham, England, where rubbish was disposed of by incineration.

Today, several millennia later, mankind is still unable to find an effective way of getting rid of waste. Moreover, the more civilized a country becomes, the more resources it consumes and the more waste it generates. 

Present-day life is almost impossible without waste because the hectic lifestyle and all industrial sectors inevitably generate waste and rubbish of various kinds. But waste may and should be viewed not as something needless, but as a mixture of valuable substances and components. Most of the SDW may be utilized again, used to produce new substances (secondary processing) or returned to nature (composting). Waste is perhaps the only product that can fetch money twice. Landfills receive money when they accept waste and when they sell it to interested organizations. 

We can be gradually saved from stinking dumps by the industrial disposal of waste. Domestic waste contains many valuable substances: organic compounds that can serve as fertilizer, paper and cardboard, glass, plastic, leather, wood and metals. Thanks to industrial processing, the volume of domestic waste in the landfills of developed countries is always decreasing. The only question is which method of disposal to select. There are many.

The most effective of them is thermal, i.e. incineration. This is confirmed by existing experience. Thanks to the thermal approach, the problem of waste has become soluble in Europe. 

The way collection and disposal of SDW is organized in Europe today is truly amazing. The pioneer in this field is Germany. Over the last 20 years, the country has travelled the road from burial of waste to recycling and rational use of secondary resources. No other country produces as much raw materials from waste as Germany. German recycling technology is considered the best in the world. About 95-98 per cent of paper and glass in Germany is collected and recycled today. The disposal and recycling of waste has practically become a separate economic sector with a workforce of 200,000 people, while annual turnover is reaching several billion euros. The main principle of the system is circulation. It is necessary to increase the quantity of material which can be recycled after first use and "reintroduced into circulation". Accordingly, production of single use materials should be reduced to the maximum extent possible. This is why waste sorting by citizens is required, otherwise no municipal budget can withstand the workload. In addition to the economic benefit, the recycling of waste is also contributing to environmental protection by reducing the emissions of carbon dioxide.

At present, every German citizen sorts out the rubbish at the stage of discarding. Depending on the policy on waste and the existing methods of recycling, separation is done differently across the country. German conscientiousness and discipline as regards waste even cause sneers amongst other Europeans. This, however, does not worry the Germans too much, as an increasing number of people are joining experts in the opinion that protection of the environment should not mean only powerful treatment facilities at industrial enterprises, stringent laws and preservation of forests. First and foremost, the environment means the responsibility of every individual, however small the details may be. 

The recycling of waste is in the spotlight throughout the world. Sometimes, quite exotic ways of resolving the problem are put forward. Whim Architecture from the Netherlands, for example, has developed a project called a "recycled island" the size of Hawaii, which represents a "floatation raft" made of secondary raw materials. According to architects, this will be a resort capable of providing itself with food and energy. The Dutch arrived at this idea on seeing the huge amount of rubbish, primarily plastic, in the ocean. Due to various currents, the rubbish accumulates in certain parts of the world ocean where it stays for years. The artificial island in the Pacific Ocean can become an amazing example of turning waste into revenue. In fact, construction will have a dual effect. While securing a patch of unusual land, mankind will also clean the ocean of thousands tonnes of lumber. A similar thing can also be seen in Singapore. Wastes are taken to Semaku Island there. Semaku is an artificial island built of waste and covering an area of 350 hectares. The island was designed in a way enabling the storage of rubbish on its territory until 2045. The plan was very simple: waste is dumped into special sections that are covered with a plastic membrane. This is then covered with fertile soil in which flowers are planted. The novelty concerns not only waste disposal sites but also the entire waste management chain. In Finland, for example, busy places (intersections, squares, railway stations) are equipped with special elevators that enable the storage of up to 100 square metres of waste underground. The surface under which such elevators are installed is used as children's play grounds and car parks because they are environmentally clean and unnoticeable. The above-ground part looks like an ordinary garbage container, while under ground there is a mechanism compressing the waste. Therefore, rubbish is taken out only once a month. 

Historically, it has so happened that industrial liquid and gaseous wastes have always been to the fore, polluting the water and air. They have been the subject of strict control on the part of the state, while SDW could always be dumped somewhere. In recent years, however, as public conscience developed, the idea has formed that it is unacceptable to bury and dump waste into the sea because it means that we are imposing these pressing and urgent issues on our successors. At the same time, a paradoxical situation emerged: the more stringent the laws on control over water and air, the higher the production of solid and largely toxic wastes because all disposal methods lead to an increase of solid wastes in sediments. 

A solution to the problem of pollution of cities with human waste is a highly complex socioeconomic and environmental challenge. Therefore, issues of waste management are becoming particularly important. Many specialists suggest that an integrated national waste management centre be established. It would be a state enterprise that would exercise control over the technical condition of all landfills and the finances allocated for the disposal of rubbish. This could prevent both the establishment of unfitted landfills and arbitrary dumping of rubbish. Such a centre could accumulate resources for future re-cultivation of older landfills and undertake the establishment of a civilized market of secondary raw materials.