Waste management（1）

In the apartment I live, a clear instruction of waste collection is signed. Normal household refuse could be thrown away in the rubbish room on each floor, while others, such as hazardous waste, e-waste and inert waste have to be taken to specific place on ground floor. Nevertheless, last weekend, when my roommate and I try to follow the instruction and bring our gas bottle to right, nothing could be discovered on the ground floor, except two huge locked rubbish bins. Plus, no relevant staff could be inquired.

Although in Australia, similar cases could be sometimes found, the overall waste management should be fine. On the contrary, in China, where I lived in for 20 years, waste management advocated by authorities and garbage classifications taught in class is not really brought into practice in a large number of regions. As a result, plenty of cleaners are employed to clean the street, but rubbish could still be seen everywhere. Different rubbish bins are located in public space, but citizens still lack the knowledge to classify each kind of wastes. It seems the government only puts effort into the final treatment of rubbish, but ignores the importance of waste management on many other stages. For instance, taking actions at the initial step.

Since waste management is complex in any context, it requires the coherence of people’s behavior, good infrastructure/service, and smart legislations given by authorities. Germany and Japan could be examples here.

In 1990, a Green Dot / Gruener-Punkt Plan is conducted in Germany. Companies are requested to prepay an amount of money to the Plan, which is responsible for establishing a network for waste collection and recycling. Any company joining in the Plan could get a Green Dot Symbol on its products, which means citizens can buy it without worries.

In Germany, rubbish bins in diverse colors may illustrate different classifications. Black ones are used to collect waste food, which will usually cause penalty, while yellow ones used for waste wrappages are Green Dot Rubbish, from which no fines should be caused. In consequence, most citizens will try to reduce black rubbishes and establish knowledge of waste collections.

Nowadays, over 90% of companies in Germany have joined the Green Dot Plan, and 23 European countries have followed Germany’s step. The success of this Green Dot Plan is significantly achieved from smart legislation and economic strategies. Nevertheless, citizen’s awareness and media also play a key role in waste management. Let’s talk about this topic in the blog tomorrow.

 Reference: http://www.docin.com/p-379303605.html