Volunteer Diary: "Genter"

Chronicles of volunteer work in the Moscow project for separate collection and processing of secondary raw materials

Moscow announced that since 2020, the city will switch to separate collection of garbage. A great plan, but so far only enthusiasts-volunteers are engaged in this in the capital.

All my experience in separate collection of garbage was literate for delivery of waste paper in second grade and acquaintance with separate containers for plastic, paper and glass recently installed in the editorial office. On trips abroad, multi-colored tanks with inscriptions and designations, for some reason the need to wash bags from under the juice before throwing them, put me at a dead end. Therefore, when I first came to the Moscow department of the Octle Collection environmental movement, I did not know almost nothing about the processing of garbage.

In Moscow, near the Kantemirovskaya metro station, the reception and sorting point of secondary raw materials “collector” operates. It is located at the address: Caucasian Boulevard, house 54, building 5, warehouse No. 4. Here, every day from twelve hours of the day to eight in the evening, a wide variety of things are being received, about the possibility of processing which I did not even know.

On my amateurish question that you are sitting here all day and bother with garbage, the employee of the “collector” Dima replies:

“Not with garbage, but with recyclable. Garbage at landfills, we have raw materials for secondary processing. And yes, we are carrying all day, I like it much more than messing around with people. ”

I am finally lost in obscure inscriptions over bags and containers with exactly the same look for me, but with some very different plastic, cardboard, foil, tin cans, banking cards, dentists, old cassettes, disks, disks, egg boxes and tons of another “trash”. When the volunteer Pasha invites me to do something understandable and useful-to help visitor Elena sort out the old things brought after general cleaning.

In addition to obvious glass, cardboard and plastic, you can also bring clothes in decent condition to the “collector”. It is difficult to process it, but you can transfer it to charitable organizations that will distribute it among those in need.

Elena, in addition to plastic and clothes, brings several bags with CDs. To process them, you need to pull the discs from the plastic box, divide the box itself into parts, because they consist of plastic of different types, and get a paper cover from the inside. Lay out all this in the corresponding bags in the warehouse.

While we are doing this, we find heroes from the “past life” - Leonid Agutin, Dmitry Malikov, “Hands Up”, “Disco Cability”. Elena with a laugh tells that he had to take out bags with this jeep secretly from her husband, if he had found out, he would have fought for them not for life, but for death.

After lunch, the van of the service to the poor comes to the poor, where we help to load the “bingeop” - the clothes, which together with the raw materials are brought to the “collector”. It turns out so much that the service employees have to choose what to take first, and for what to return the other day.

My second volunteer day begins in another warehouse, where trucks bring huge bags above me tall with recyclables collected on promotions held by the “collector” in the areas of Moscow and the region. Employee of the eco -moving Maxim teaches me to sort.

Bags are called "Bigbegi", from the English expression Big Bag - a large bag. Most often, plastic is brought to them. There are several types of plastic suitable for processing. They are indicated by numbers from one to seven in triangular icons at the bottom of the bottle, container or other product. Unfortunately, now in Russia only four species are accepted for processing with the population. And only if the raw materials are carefully sorted and contains a minimum of impurities. We have to do this.

“When you work here, it is interesting to think that all these bottles, for example, could lie with a thin layer on the planet, and now they will become something useful”,

- adds the point of our monotonous work in the heat of Maxim.

In order for the plastic to be sorted correctly and it is accepted for processing, from the Bigbeg, to the capture of the full that the surrenders qualified as “plastic for processing”, it is necessary to lay out the “Pet Mix” in one bag - this is plastic PET, except for bottles. Drinking bottles, except white, are separately, white - separately. “Two” and “five” to other bags, separately “six”. And there are also “Cheburashki” - plastic of those types that are not accepted for processing or not at all signed. Such unidentified objects are sent to the garbage container for a regular training ground.

When they explain to me all this scheme, I once again look at a huge Bigbeg in front of us and seven bags for sorting, I am horrified. The task seems if not impossible, then very difficult and, most importantly, long. Comment of the volunteer Yana does not add optimism:

“We must remember that all that you see here is just one percent that conscious people tried to at least convey to a separate gathering. So far, there are extremely few, because the majority’s consciousness stuck at a primitive level: here is a man along the street, documented, he had a goby in his hand, he unclenched his fingers, the bull disappeared from his hand and ceased to be his problem, and what happened to him then - the person does not think about it. ”

To my surprise, in four hands with Yana, who has been engaged in volunteering in the “Golder” since February, we are quickly dealing with a quarter of Bigbeg. She explains to me that it is not necessary to watch the designation with the type of plastic on each product. Drinking bottles are always a “unit”, they can simply be sent to a separate bag. White bottles are also enough to determine visually. Bottles from detergents, air conditioners for linen are most often a “deuce”. And the “six” can be determined by the sound at all, it crunches, and if you try to fold it, it breaks. So the matter goes much faster, and in just forty minutes Bigbeg is empty. Dima immediately brings from the bowels the warehouse as follows with the inscription "to analyze."

The next morning in the warehouse begins cheerful:

- Max, hello, I'm with my garbage today! Look, I even washed him!

- Hello, as soon as you washed this tetrapak, he stopped being garbage and became recycled, remember already.

All day, Maxim and Dima are fighting with tetrapaks from the campaign. When the press is filled, the magic button makes a neat cube from a pile of bags and milk, as in the Cartoon “Walli”. The volunteers are so affectionately and call the press, which greatly facilitates life in the warehouse, - Valek.

True, a very specific smell becomes a side effect of the production of a cube from tetrapaks-when the press reaches the bottom, from under the packages they begin to hiss, flow and stink “organic waste”, which, in fact, should not be there, especially at an environment of +32 degrees.

The presence of organics, the volunteer Alena capaciously explains:

“The consciousness of most people who surrender recyclables is mainly consists of two thoughts: the first - I save the planet, the second - no matter how I do it and who corrects my jambs. Therefore, few people read the instructions for separately passing garbage, and even fewer people observe it, for example, wash tetrapaks before bringing them here. ”

Sprayed by organic waste of unconscious “rescuers of the planet” Max supports Alena: “For some reason, many people think that you can take garbage here.”

All volunteers and employees in the “collector”, with whom we spend time over the Bigbegs with plastic, analyze the dispensers on spare parts, press packaging from eggs and bags, once accidentally learned about the possibility of helping the planet, do something simple. We found a way to less harm the environment with their life. For some of them, it became work, and for some-a useful hobby.

Now I have a separate bag to collect recyclables at home, I am mine. And I also collect on weekends to friends who had before either thought about separate gathering at all, or limited to pouring glass and tin cans to the Ecoline grid near the trash. Twice a month, with the most concerned fate of the planet, we are trying to visit Dima, Max and Valka with our recyclables and help to analyze in a big warehouse after the shares of the “collector”.

You can find out how to hand over the project, find out how to pass secondary raw materials and become a volunteer here: https://rsbor-msk.ru