The problem of waste in Russia and ways to solve it Part 2. Reusable and recyclable

Almost four years have passed since the publication of the first material (https://habr.com/ru/articles/529870/), during this time there are quite a lot of containers for example of secondary raw materials of plastic, batteries and lamps, cardboard, etc. This is encouraging, but they are still not enough to solve the problem, let's raise this topic again and think about ways to solve it.

First of all, I want to say that in the first article I focused on the rejection of plastic, especially disposable plastic, but after watching the interesting article from Pobedinsky, plastic will save humanity – I advise you to watch it, (https://ya.ru/video/preview/8983759855613354180) I largely agree with the author that there are many benefits and advantages from plastic, including for the environment, but unfortunately the problems associated with plastic still need to be solved and the more plastic there is, the bigger this problem becomes.

But what is the main problem with plastic? That it does not decompose? And if you dig deeper, that it is simply scattered everywhere and there is a lot of it, in other words, the problem is not with the plastic itself, but with you and me, with people who just throw it anywhere, do not collect and do not sort it, and it does not have much commercial value as usual.
And the problem concerns not only plastic, but all waste in general.

1. Psychology of citizens and education.
That is, the first problem is psychological, or cultural social, I wrote more about this in the first article, here we need to start with kindergartens, and then in schools and then teach from childhood to sort and take care of nature, but the main thing is to install containers for collecting secondary raw materials in all such institutions, for example, near each kindergarten, school, college and university, etc. there should be baskets for collecting plastic bottles, caps (especially beautiful ones in the form of hearts or animals, I saw such) as well as for cardboard and paper, glass and aluminum (mainly for drink cans) usually in such institutions there is a lot of this type of waste. But we should not stop there, the installation of such containers is mandatory for all government agencies where possible, especially if a large number of employees work there, various MFCs, municipalities, hospitals, etc., such containers must be installed near supermarkets, markets or shopping centers, for example, if there is a plumbing or electronics store, there will definitely be cardboard and polyethylene waste, near grocery stores there will be PET or glass, etc.

All that remains is to regularly collect this waste and send it for recycling, which is, in principle, already a fairly well-established process. (Albeit not everywhere and not for all types of waste)

2. Reusability and reuse.
The second is reusability and reuse, in my opinion, this is one of the key points in the fight against mountains of waste, because if you use it repeatedly (multiple times), then the waste itself will simply become less, here is an example from life, you buy auto oil for replacement in the car engine in a plastic container (usually 1-3 times a year) and after use this container is usually thrown away, or at best goes for recycling, but the question is why? After all, you can bring this container back to the store and after checking for integrity and the presence of unnecessary components, i.e. garbage in it, it can be reused, i.e. we send it back to the manufacturer, he pours auto oil there and again on the store shelf, for interest I would suggest sticking a special sticker that this container was reused X times, but this is not necessary, although taking into account the criticism that the appearance of the container will deteriorate each time, such a sticker would be appropriate.
The main principle is that non-food plastic, i.e. not plastic bottles from under water, but from under technical liquids can and should be used repeatedly and many times and there is practically nothing dangerous for a person in this, even if we reuse such containers at least once, we will reduce the amount of this kind of plastic by 2 times, and if more times, then even more. Here we are talking mainly about technical liquids, for example, in the construction industry, various containers for antiseptics, antifreeze or household chemicals, for example, bleach, various detergents, etc.

Supply chains can also look the same only in the opposite direction, for example, the store that sells car oils or household chemicals, accepts the same products, or rather the packaging from them, and passes them back to the supplier, who will bring a new product and take the packaging from the previous one, and also possibly sorting centers for reuse. Packaging from some food products can also be used multiple times, for example, the packaging of egg cells, which immediately after purchase goes into the trash container, and not always for recycling, of course…

One of the options to launch this mechanism is to interest citizens and businesses financially, to add a value to an empty plastic bottle or glass, for example 1-5 rubles or in the amount of 5-10% of the cost of the product sold, for example, car oil, this markup on the product when returning the container would be returned in the form of money or cashback, or in the form of bonus points when buying a new product. Even this option is possible: you bring the old container and buy a new one with a discount, just this added value, this can be done, for example, with car tires, which are now sometimes littered our streets or landfills, but all this should provide for an additional markup for disposal, which will push the process and citizens not to throw away but to hand over for recycling or use reusable, for example, the same plastic or glass bottles, not having such a value, just lie around unneeded, and if they cost at least 1-5 rubles, it would make sense to collect them and hand them in….

To begin with, of course, it is better to conduct a test on one or several types of goods, for example, car oils, car tires, perhaps some construction liquids, etc.
This approach can be applied not only to plastic or glass, but also to paint cans or household appliances, lamp batteries, anything that can be recycled or reused.

3 Liquid dispensing machines
A logical continuation of reusable use is the emergence of special machines for pouring liquids, for example, for the same auto oils, for example, in specialized stores you can come with your own container and pour the amount of auto oil you need there, so you don’t need a plastic bottle at all, or, for example, for detergents like Fairy, Synergetic, etc. please come, pour 5 liters and use it for a whole year, because in fact we don’t need a container, we buy the contents of this very bottle, and not beautiful packaging.

In principle, probably everyone has already seen water dispensers and many use them, I think that something similar can be done for milk and other fermented milk products, for example, in large supermarkets, it seems to me that this would be quite possible, as well as for carbonated drinks, etc. Although of course you need to be careful with food products.

4. Product restoration, second life
Sometimes various equipment in a faulty condition ends up in landfills, although the fault itself can be easily fixed, people do not always understand, and probably in most cases, they prefer to just throw it away and buy a new one than repair it, in these cases it is reasonable to create special collection points for household or construction equipment and allow anyone to come and perhaps even repair it right on the spot or choose the goods they need, of course, such goods can be sold by weight, or entry to such a site can be made paid, I think the market will decide.

But there is quite a lot of other types of waste, for example, construction waste, those who have done repairs or construction know that there is almost always something extra left, for example, a couple of sheets of plasterboard, screws, profiles, maybe some mixtures, wallpaper, etc., often it is either thrown away immediately, or lies for a long time and may not always be useful. Therefore, it makes sense to create collection points or purchase points for this type of materials, but this is more like a business idea.

I am increasingly moving away from the topic, as they say, and here Ostap got carried away…. let's stop here, if anyone has their own suggestions, adequate criticism is only welcome, perhaps you have seen how this problem is solved in other countries of the world, write, we will discuss.