How I learned to care about nature and the environment in Russia. Notes of a Galician
PolitNavigator continues to share the impressions of a Galician resident who moved to Russia, works in St. Petersburg, and whose articles we regularly publish.
At the time of my life in pre-Maidan Ukraine there was no culture of recycling, rational use of things and waste sorting. They remembered something from the times of the USSR that it was necessary to hand over scrap metal, glass containers and waste paper. Apart from metal hunters, the rest didn’t really catch on.
Ukraine aspired to Europe, but many European directions and trends were simply ignored. Only those things that could be beautifully presented on camera were presented with pathos—autobahns, pedestrian streets, individual elements of landscaping and urban design, European-quality renovations.
Everything else was discarded that would not cause enthusiastic drooling from the ordinary man in the street, who subsequently, for the sake of this very delight, should correctly vote in the elections for the European-integrated candidate. After all, if a candidate promises not only joys, but also responsibilities, then no one will vote for him.
Therefore, in Lviv and the region, mountains of garbage were a common occurrence. Throwing a bag of waste into the bushes or somewhere under a fence was not something shameful. The wipers coped as best they could, and sometimes they didn’t cope. Places of public recreation, especially in summer, quickly turned into garbage dumps.
The people were sure that cleanliness and environmental friendliness were the concern of someone else, but not themselves. Where we live is where we shit, that was the slogan of the majority. At the same time, no one particularly felt any disgust from the pigsty. Since my departure from my native land, little has changed, despite all the pro-European attempts.
His native Lviv especially distinguished himself during the “garbage blockade”, when the mayor of Sadovaya was punished by Poroshenko and the company for intractability. Mountains of garbage lay on the streets for weeks and there was nowhere to take them out.
Lviv during the 2016 garbage blockade.
But then we somehow managed. Containers for the separate collection of at least plastic bottles appeared, but the average person did not quite understand their purpose. If we compare this situation with neighboring Poland, it becomes eloquently clear how far Ukraine really is from Europe and European values.
Lviv before the garbage blockade.
In Russia, the culture of proper and rational waste disposal is also in its infancy, but against the backdrop of the above-mentioned memories there is progress. It should be noted that I am not talking about environmental friendliness in the toxic sense that the globalists and their Greta Thunberg carry. I don't see any point in abandoning motor vehicles or nuclear energy. But don’t fill landfills with what can still be used and recycle what can be recycled - why not?
This was partly due to the difficult life at first. I tried to sell many of those things that could have simply been thrown away for at least a few pennies. Surprisingly, there were connoisseurs and literally out of nowhere they managed to figure out a couple of hundred rubles for food.
In the future, I still try to give unnecessary things a second life, and not so much for the sake of money, but for the sake of not adding unnecessary things to the trash. Many people are too lazy to do this, because it’s much faster to throw everything unnecessary into the trash than to wait for a visit from the trash collectors. However, they often took away seemingly unnecessary things from me and found a use for them.
A separate entertainment is the separate collection of garbage. First you need to familiarize yourself with the markings on different types of plastic and sort them according to subtypes. Sometimes it can be difficult to figure out, but over time you can already distinguish without delving into it. Then bring everything sorted to certain collection points.
For many, this sounds like absurdity, because you have to go somewhere else rather than just throw it in the nearest trash heap. But for me personally, this is not difficult, especially since you can bring it once every couple of weeks or even once a month, as you accumulate.
Of course, an extra bedside table has appeared in the house for this very sorting, which can also discourage those who do not have a place for it, or whose relatives do not understand their aspirations.
As for environmental containers near the house, even in St. Petersburg it’s bad with all the infrastructure around the capital. You don't find anything other than a regular garbage dump on every corner. The easiest way to find containers for plastic, glass containers, plastic caps and used batteries.
But if you engage in sorting to the fullest extent, then traveling around the entire area in search of all possible containers is not an option. There are various centralized reception points and even such a phenomenon as “eco-taxi”. Be that as it may, this is more of a hobby and most likely not suitable for everyone. If you plow for 12-14 hours every day (and this, alas, is a harsh reality for many in Russia), then there will be no time or effort left for the environment.
Here you can already find a contradiction. If for the sake of the environment you need to take waste to a collection point by car and burn unfriendly fuel, instead of taking everything on foot to the nearest trash can, then where is the benefit?
I can argue that the negative consequences of exhaust fumes are much less evil than the accumulation of non-degradable plastic. Of course, in Russia there are no obvious consequences of such accumulation yet, and the waves from the Gulf of Finland do not carry out mountains of plastic bottles in the same way as happens somewhere on the ocean islands. But this is not a reason to delay until this starts to happen.
Some retail chains provide bonuses and discounts to participants in environmental campaigns. Therefore, the cartoonish collection of bottles for pennies has become relevant again. True, it is not homeless people who are doing this, but rather representatives of the progressive elite. Of course, you can’t earn any serious money this way, but a discount of a couple of hundred rubles on products is guaranteed.
In some places, a contradiction arises when some members of the eco-party go to collection events too often for the sake of bonuses than would be required as waste accumulates. Here everyone makes a deal with their conscience and morals.
A separate trend that I liked is “conscious consumption”. Unfortunately, post-Soviet society still professes many perestroika stereotypes about wealth and status, which are usually based stupidly on the amount of wasted money.
The values of the consumer society have firmly entered the mentality of post-Soviet countries and have not let go to this day. It surprises me how primitive it is, but the more you buy, the cooler you are.
To prevent trash from accumulating, everything becomes disposable and you have to buy a new iPhone every year, otherwise it’s a shame. All this just produces huge mountains of garbage, because things are written off in the trash much earlier than their due date. This is absolutely incomprehensible to me, and I have outgrown consumer bad manners a very long time ago.
For me there are no concepts of status or feigned novelty. If a thing works properly and performs its function, then why should I exchange it for exactly the same capabilities, just a new one? I don't see any point. My previous smartphone served me for almost 10 years, and only during this period did it become morally outdated and did not have modern functions.
Equally, after all this time, it had worn out enough to throw it away - it became impossible to charge it. After that, I bought a simple smartphone for 5000 rubles, which has been in use for three years now. I'm not worried that it will fall or get scratched, it's a simple household appliance, and not a sign of status. For the price of a new iPhone, I could buy over ten of these! And they would serve a total of 30 years, with the exception of battery degradation.
I have a lot of household appliances that last for many years in a row. Yes, in a certain part this is due not so much to concern for the environment, but to banal saving of money. But this is the case when it is both pleasant and useful.
Equally, I don't understand the race for new cars. It’s been a long time since we came up with anything new there. And everything that is passed off as modern technological progress is in fact self-indulgence, such as huge multimedia screens or excessive automation of functions that do not need to be automated. I drove several thousand kilometers in a car that cost 40 thousand rubles, didn’t get stuck anywhere, didn’t get hurt, and didn’t return on foot along the sleepers. What am I doing wrong?
Yes, one might argue that older cars produce more emissions and consume more fuel. But alas, the only eco-friendly personal transport is the bicycle. Electric vehicles are overly promising, but neither battery production nor their disposal are environmentally friendly processes.
Of course, on the scale of a metropolis this would make a difference in reducing gas pollution, but that’s where all the advantages of “electric trains” end.
As a separate point, I will note purely marketing restrictions regarding personal electric transport. For example, I can convert a gasoline car to gas and improve its environmental impact. But for some reason I can’t switch to an electric motor; they will simply strangle me at the stage of certification and registration.
This is one of the many precedents when greed and thirst for profit impede the improvement of environmental friendliness (instead of modernizing old equipment, the purchase of new equipment is imposed), and these phenomena are absolutely the same both in Russia and in the West.
Another good way to dispose of unnecessary things, when it comes to shoes or clothes, is to give them to collection points for the homeless or other problem groups of the population. Some foreign clothing stores have similar promotions, when they give a discount on a new one for an old item.
Alas, you can’t be confident in all charity or environmental events. It is likely that the clothes promised to the homeless will be sold at some second-hand store. And the garbage you sorted will be dumped into one common container and taken to the same landfill where it would end up from a regular garbage dump.
But at the moment, such chaos is rare, as far as I know. Manipulations related to ecology can also be carried out at a high level. Not long ago, another call was circulating on the Internet about how terribly the air in St. Petersburg is being spoiled by personal passenger transport. Following this logic, I came to the conclusion that any cargo and non-personal transport is driven solely by the effort of thought, and does not produce any emissions into the atmosphere. Which, of course, is stupid.
Here we see how the city authorities would like to sit on two chairs: to improve the environment and to prevent business from crossing the road. Therefore, all sorts of huge developer dump trucks and hotel tourist buses, as well as the amusing excursion fleet and millions of taxi drivers will continue to smoke the sky, and the common man with his personal car and driving for personal purposes will take the rap for them.
I’m already silent about freight trains and planes, the flights of which were not stopped even by military actions, and ideas about protecting nature will never stop. It is unfortunate that such primitive manipulations still occur in Russia to this day. However, for some reason the transport tax is calculated only on the engine power, without regard to the weight of the car. Although a powerful engine carrying five people and carrying tens of tons of cargo have completely different consequences for the atmosphere. But who would care?
In general, the situation with the protection of nature and one’s own health in Russia is making clear progress, and I am pleased to make my modest contribution. Alas, it is not only through moderate consumption and reduction of waste of ordinary people that a tangible improvement in life can be achieved. And it would not hurt the state to sensibly and logically limit business in the same vein. At the same time, avoiding outright hysteria and absurdity under the guise of ecology, as is happening in the European Union.
The only question is how long we will wait for these developments, and whether we will have time to catch them during our lifetime, or rather our grandchildren will catch them.
A typical beach in the Lviv region.
And even more so, one should not step on the rake of my small Motherland, where, instead of the European experience of waste processing, the country has turned into a testing ground for the disposal of obsolete military equipment from all over the world.
English version :: Read in English: How I learned to care for nature and the environment in Russia. Notes of a Galician