Divide and Prosper

The huge piles of garbage around Russian cities deface the countryside, poison the air, and frequently cause fires. Europe recycles and re-uses up to 65% of all waste whereas Russia is at 3-4% at most. This is caused by the Russians' attitudes towards resources, the major garbage collectors' lobby, and underdeveloped infrastructure. However, the situation is gradually improving. Kommersant has attempted to figure out who segregates waste into categories in Russia and how one can motivate others to do the same.

Anton Kuznetsov's path to the garbage business started in a Moscow courtyard. The owners of the vodka kiosks that sprang up in the early 90s would dump garbage right underneath apartment blocks' windows. Anton and some friends set up a "neighborhood initiative". "First, we tried to take it up with the Caucasus natives who owned these kiosks. But then we simply started compacting the waste and segregating it into piles. Suddenly we found out that a number of types of waste have a resale value,” he tells a Kommersant correspondent, stroking his full beard.

Today, Anton runs "Sfera Ekologii" (Sphere of Ecology), a company engaged in segregated waste collection and in building an environmental awareness in Russia. The path from taking things up with the nascent entrepreneurial class to an office in the Artplay Design Center near Kurskaya metro station took about 20 years. In addition to companies and office centers – which make up the bulk of the client base – there are five thousand individuals that bring segregated waste to Sfera Ekologii's collection locations on a regular basis on their own time and, on occasion, spending their own money. "Tsentr Ekologicheskihkh Initsiativ" (Center for Environmental Initiatives) and "Chistaya Planeta" (Clean Planet) are two other companies in the same field. Kuznetsov is even happy at the arrival of competition: the market is much greater than the current service offering.

The idea is relatively simple: recyclable waste (such as, glass, cardboard, containers, etc.) is collected from those that generate it, segregated, and transported to a facility where it is used as manufacturing feedstock. A minimum of engineering innovation, yet the benefits are huge. The alternative to segregated collection and recycling is either incineration or burial. Incinerating waste produces dioxins which cause cancer, while burial generates an equally poisonous filtrate which is a ground water pollutant. That is why Europe recycles up to 65% of its waste.

According to Greenpeace's Toxic Program Manager for Russia Dmitri Artamonov, Austria, Germany, and Switzerland are recycling leaders. "The situation in Russia varies by region. Moscow, Rostov-on-Don, Petrozavodsk, and Yaroslavl are the most advanced recyclers,” Kuznetsov noted while talking to Kommersant. Unfortunately there are no official statistics, but expert opinion puts the rate of recycling at about 3%, and 4-5% in Moscow and the Moscow Region. "It is all about our abundance of resources. This is a large country, and we are not used to economizing,” he opines. "At the same time, Finland increased recycling from 0% to 100% for some types of waste between 2000 and 2010, because of increasing resource prices."

For most Europeans, waste recycling is natural. Thus, most of Sfera Ekologii's Russian clients are Western companies: Tetra Pak, Unilever, Nespresso, Volkswagen, and many others. Non-profits do their part as well, such as the World Wildlife Fund, the UN Development Programme, and the British Embassy. "When expats arrive in Russia, they are confused because segregating garbage is a long-standing habit. That is why we found ourselves at the right place at the right time in the mid-2000s. There was demand,” says Kuznetsov. For the moment, this approach is taking root at a very slow rate in Russia: not even lethal mercury-vapor lamps or batteries are being removed from the general piles. But even if they were, their collection locations are normally to be found deep inside outlying districts that are very difficult to get to.

The two primary reasons for this lack of awareness are an underdeveloped infrastructure and the high costs of recycling. The cheapest solution is simply to dump the waste in landfill at a cost of about 1,000 rubles per ton. Conflicting information is available regarding the other options. According to Artamonov's predecessor, Ex-Coordinator of Greenpeace's Toxic Program Alexei Kiselev, recycling costs about EUR 250 per ton, while the cost of incineration is EUR 500. The authors of the 2012 report published by the Federal Service for the Supervision of Natural Resource Management believe that incineration is less costly, especially given the electrical power generated by waste incineration plants. Artamonov is certain that the reason for this is the lobbying undertaken by the owners of waste incineration plants for this type of waste management.

Russia has virtually no infrastructure for waste segregation. However good a job individuals do of segregating waste, it needs to be segregated again, more professionally, before recycling. There are no fewer than 10 kinds of plastic alone. Some are suitable for food storage, others only have non-alimentary uses. This segregation can only be done by hand, or by using expensive equipment. No one is willing to bother. Plarus in Solnechnogorsk and RB-Group in Gus Khrustalny are the rare exceptions. Thus, according to the Rostech Corporation, Russia has 31 billion tons of waste stored at 200 landfills with 15% of that amount coming in on an annual basis. Between 7 and 10% of new waste is incinerated, 3% is recycled, and the remainder is buried under a thin layer of soil, at best, and decomposes, poisoning the air.

Artamonov believes that the public will have a hard time developing an environmental conscience without the Government's help. "There should be a packaging tax, and purchases from manufacturers of recycled goods should be subsidized,” he says with conviction. For the moment, the Government looks like it is only going through the motions. Starting in 2012, the Government of Moscow conducted an experiment. A group of contractors were selected to collect and recycle segregated waste. The project was priced at 70 billion rubles and slated to run 15 years.

In early 2015, Greenpeace activists conducted a study (which Kommersant covered in Issue No. 109, 06/24/2015) of contract performance. It turned out that of the 162 locations established by the project, a quarter did not function at all, while another 23 functioned in an irregular manner. As for multi-colored waste containers for segregated collection, deployed in Moscow's parks in 2012-2013, their function appears to have been largely decorative. "I was unable to find out where the waste from these trash cans was going. I came to the conclusion that it was simply being dumped into a regular container and taken to a landfill,” Kuznetsov says adamantly.

In December 2014, the State Duma adopted some amendments to the Statute on Waste which provides incentives for recycling. "It needs to be enhanced with subordinate regulations that provide the specifics, but the overall trend is positive,” notes Artamonov. Based on the contents of the Greenpeace report on the recycling project's problems, many contractors started to improve after the report came out. The most important aspect remains: good personal and corporate environmental awareness. In the short term, Kuznetsov plans to implement waste-free processes at manufacturing facilities. Product waste would be collected quickly and efficiently, brought back to the facility, and turned into feedstock. Not only is this environmentally friendly but also profitable. A strong argument in times of crisis.

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