Dirty laundry

Greenpeace is trying to organize an unofficial referendum against the construction of waste incineration plants in Moscow

Inspired by their ability to convince the country's top leadership of the harmfulness of the haphazard development of Olympic venues in Sochi , Russian representatives of the international environmental movement Greenpeace set about “re-educating” Moscow officials. Environmentalists who object to the massive construction of waste incineration plants (WIPs) in the capital are warning citizens that the capital is facing an environmental disaster. Yesterday, the head of the toxic program of Greenpeace Russia, Alexey Kiselev, presented journalists with an interactive map of the capital, with the help of which Muscovites will be able to assess the potential danger of the appearance not only in their microdistrict, but also in the surrounding area of ​​thermal waste disposal plants.

According to Mr. Kiselev, the construction of six new thermal waste processing plants planned by the city authorities (there are currently three incinerators in the capital) will become a headache for literally all city residents. Environmentalists claim that dioxin air pollution, which is inevitable when burning Moscow garbage, can spread far beyond the Moscow Ring Road.

Let us recall that in the spring of this year, as part of the “strategic course of creating an industrial base for waste processing and reducing landfill disposal,” the Moscow government adopted a resolution “On the development of the technical base of the city municipal waste management system.” According to the document, by 2015, thanks to the construction of waste incineration plants in the Northern, Northwestern, Southwestern, Eastern, Southeastern and Zelenograd districts of the capital, officials hope to reduce landfills of household waste from 80 to 27-37%. At the same time, the capital’s authorities are counting on both “maximum use of the energy potential of waste” and the land resource of factories. In particular, according to the MSZ placement scheme developed by the Moscow Committee for Architecture, it is planned to “ensure a reduction in the size of the sanitary protection zone of the designed facilities to the boundaries of the designated areas.”

Formally, the city project also provides for the expansion of the fleet of specialized containers for separate waste collection. However, environmentalists are confident that in fact the program loses sight of the European experience in waste sorting, and, therefore, heat treatment of waste in Moscow is dangerous for toxic waste entering the furnace. According to the chairman of the “Moscow Garbage Man” association, Lazar Shubov, batteries, mercury lamps and other objects, once in the oven, will lead to the release of substances of the first hazard class along with the smoke. Independent environmentalists believe that while the city does not have a proven system of sanitary protection of the city in the form of selective waste collection, it is too early to use thermal technologies on a large scale. In particular, according to Mr. Shubov, in countries with the most favorable environmental situation (Sweden, Switzerland, Japan), only 39% of garbage is burned. The Moscow authorities, according to environmentalists, instead of establishing a dialogue with the population and demonstrating by their own example the culture of throwing away garbage, prefer to go the mechanical route.

Environmentalists hope that the European experience in combating both garbage and the danger of its illiterate recycling will force citizens to pay close attention to the policy of capital officials in the field of waste disposal in the metropolis. According to Alexey Kiselyov, Greenpeace will try to collect the maximum number of reviews from citizens about the city hall’s plans to build dangerous waste processing complexes and present not only the opinion of experts, but also the public to President Dmitry Medvedev. True, so far only about 15 thousand Muscovites have supported ecologists with their proposed alternative program for the development of so-called selective waste collection.

The capital's Department of Housing and Public Utilities and Public Improvement, in turn, told Vremya Novostei that the serious construction program for the MSZ was, naturally, adopted taking into account the opinion of specialists. But ecologists involved in the city management structure do not share the concerns of their independent colleagues. “A competent engineering solution is more expensive than populist statements,” Adam Gonopolsky, deputy general director of the State Unitary Enterprise Ecotekhprom, told Vremya Novostey. He is convinced that thanks to sorting, only 8% of waste can be recycled, and the remaining 92%, given land shortages, must be burned. According to Mr. Gonopolsky, in just four years, with the annual growth of the already large generation of household waste (about 5 million tons per year), the landfills in Moscow and the Moscow region will be exhausted, and the capital faces a garbage crisis worse than Naples. In his opinion, there is no worthy alternative to incineration, and “it’s too frivolous to conduct experiments in a city of 12 million.” Moreover, according to him, there is still no recycled product with such a level of profitability as electricity generated by burning waste.

Yulia KHOMCHENKO