Global dumps of the world. Throw away cannot be recycled: where to put a comma? Huge dump city: How Europe fills up with garbage one of the largest cities in Africa The most garbage country in the world

The global problem of our planet is the rapid increase in garbage waste, which, when decomposed, causes irreparable harm to it. The accumulation of explosive gases in rotting landfills often leads to fires. Harmful substances are carried by the wind over long distances, causing dangerous infections and diseases. In order to avoid an ecological catastrophe, it is necessary to solve the problems of waste disposal using modern technologies, the best practices of European countries.

Which country has the largest garbage dump in the world? Fortunately, Russia is not the leader here.

Dry statistics put sunny California in second place in the ranking of the largest landfills. Every day, 1,600 trucks bring more than ten thousand tons of garbage here. The landfill covers over 700 acres. The peak of the rubbish pile is 150 meters high.

In New York, in 2001, a landfill was opened to receive garbage from all over the largest metropolis. Every day, the volume of garbage increases by 13 thousand tons. The peak of the garbage dump is over 25 meters.

In Bangladesh, in the city of Chittagong, there is the largest center in the world for the recycling of old ships and sea vessels. On all old ships, waterproofing is harmful asbestos, the paint contains lead, arsenic, and cadmium. About 100,000 workers are dismantling ships, receiving beggarly pay for labor hazardous to health. But Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries where labor protection laws are practically non-existent. Wages here are among the lowest. To survive, people agree to such working conditions. It is not uncommon for dismantling deaths when fragments of a ship, steel beams fall. Taking advantage of the plight of the country, decommissioned ships are brought here. Every year, workers disassemble about 250 ships. Lead waste is dumped ashore and machine oils are drained. For Bangladesh, this is a real disaster.

The developed countries of the world often send electronic waste for recycling to Ghana, Nigeria, Vietnam, India, Pakistan for a small fee. Ghana is the most affected by the accumulation of hazardous e-waste. Every year, hundreds of millions of tons of e-waste end up in its landfills. Agbogbloshie is a giant garbage dump in western Africa. Without using any protective equipment, more than three thousand people are engaged in the processing of electronic waste. When burned, mercury, lead, and cadmium are released into the air in concentrations that exceed the permissible hundreds of times. For many, hazardous e-waste metal mining is the only possible job that pays no more than two dollars a day. All electronic waste comes here illegally and so far it has not been possible to put things in order with the largest poisonous landfill.

And the leader in the sad rating is the huge Gyre landfill in the North Pacific. More than six thousand square kilometers of territory are covered with harmful plastic waste. As it decomposes, plastic releases dangerous toxins that poison fish, flocks of dolphins and whales, and animals. Nearby are poor settlements. For many people, the search for any salable value in this dump is the only source of income. Even the fear of a deadly disease does not stop them. The landfill is called the "Pacific Garbage Patch". Located between the Hawaiian Islands and California. This part of the Pacific Ocean is a completely dead sea! Dead fish, birds, whales, dolphins, shipwrecks, rotten algae and piles of plastic. The fetid smell of hydrogen sulfide wafts around.

Is our planet worthy of such an attitude??

Ecologists and scientists demand to ban plastic products and use biopackaging. The struggle for the cleanliness of the world's oceans, for a safe life on the planet must begin today, so that tomorrow it will not be too late.

A garbage collection village in China, an electronics dump in Ghana, a ship graveyard in India - how the world is getting rid of waste.

With its history, garbage shows how the idea of ​​not only hygiene and health issues, but also urban planning, the social structure of society, and even international relations has changed. This becomes clear not only from the composition of waste, but also from the changing ways of its disposal. The compilation tells how the garbage has come a long way - from a pile of broken clay pots outside the settlement to tons of nuclear waste - and what people have learned along the way.

Garbage in history

The first waste bins at the municipal level were recorded in Athens in 400 BC. e. Then all the waste was collected in special baskets, which were then emptied in designated places outside the city. In ancient Rome, garbage was also taken out of the city limits. In the southwest of Rome, the artificial hill of Monte Testaccio, one of the largest ancient dumps in the world, is still preserved. Monte Testaccio, almost 50 meters high, consists entirely of fragments of 25 million broken amphorae.

In the Middle Ages in Europe, garbage on the streets became one of the causes of mass diseases. Only in the 15th century, after the plague in many European cities, the question of paving the streets was asked: before that, the townspeople had to wade through puddles of dirt, feces and food waste. However, the first systems for wastewater began to appear only with the advent of the era of industrialization. The first system was built in London, in the Thames Estuary, at the end of the 19th century. Engineer Joseph Baseljet designed a system of ten sewers that drained into the North Sea. Prior to this, all waste was poured directly into the Thames.

In the 20th century, with the development of technology and production, the composition of garbage has qualitatively changed. Now cardboard, plastic, chemical and medical waste have been added to food waste. But at the same time, for a long time, the method of its disposal remained the same: the garbage was buried, thrown into the ocean or burned. Only in the second half of the 20th century, along with the growth of the hippie movement in America, did interest in the problem of ecology appear. On April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day event takes place, in which several thousand educational institutions across America take part. Peaceful demonstrations called for the development of environmental protection methods.

Garbage of the world

Today, depending on the region, the issue of garbage is solved in different ways. In some countries, residents are busy diligently separating paper from tins at home. Other countries, like Switzerland, import neighbors' rubbish and burn it in their factories. Thirdly, people work at landfills, sorting out garbage brought from Europe and America, sometimes in containers under the guise of humanitarian aid.

Switzerland

In Switzerland, everyone pays a fee for a certain size of their trash can. As a result, in order to save money on garbage, many enterprises buy rammers that compress waste into cubes and thus allow you to pay for an additional tank. Residents and businesses alike have become so adept at compacting and distributing their waste that modern incinerators lack raw materials. Many of them are aimed at burning waste and generating electricity. To pay for and justify the construction of factories, some Swiss cantons have to import garbage from Italy.

Japan

In Japan, garbage regulations are determined by the municipality, or to be more precise, by the garbage plant that belongs to it. On average, each resident has to divide their garbage into the following categories - plastic, glass, tins, cardboard and paper. Separately, waste should be divided into combustible and non-combustible. If you bought a cutlet in a plastic wrapper and then washed the container, then you need to put it in plastic trash, and if you haven’t washed it, put it in a combustible one. When the Japanese want to donate large electrical appliances, they buy a special stamp and stick it on the item before throwing it away. The value of a stamp depends on the item. For example, a refrigerator can cost between $50 and $100 to throw away. Therefore, many Japanese do not throw out large garbage, but give it to friends for free.

China

In Beijing, all types of recyclable waste - from plastic bottles to iron cans - do not have to be taken to collection points, it is enough to take them out into the street in the morning and sell them to a garbage collector passing by. The scavenger, in turn, will take the loot to the suburbs of the capital, Dong Xiao Kou Village, known as the village of garbage collectors. In this small village, not far from new buildings, mountains of cardboard, old tires, dishes and paper waste rise. The inhabitants of the village, mostly visitors from remote poor provinces, spend here around the clock, sorting out the rubble. Some live in self-built huts from boards or metal plates found right there in the dump.

Ghana

In the vicinity of Accra, the capital of Ghana, there is the largest electronics dump in the world - the Agboshbloshi dump. Here, on the Atlantic coast, computers, televisions, monitors, old cassette recorders, sewing machines and telephones are brought from all over the world and thrown into one big pile. The rubbish of some people turns here into the wealth of others: people from all over the country come to the electronic rubble to earn money. The workers at the junkyard break the machinery apart or burn its individual parts and collect the aluminum and copper parts. At the end of the day, for copper and aluminum, they receive a cash reward at the receiving point. Average earnings per day is $2-3. Most Agboshbloshi workers die from disease and poisoning caused by poisonous substances, toxins and radiation.

India

The city of Alang on the northwest coast of India is known as the largest ship graveyard in the world. Along 10 km of coastline, just like dolphins thrown by the waves, old cargo and passenger ships lie here. Over 20 years of the existence of the enterprise, more than 6,500 ships were dismantled here. Old ships are brought here from all over the world, often without prior decontamination, and then the workers take them apart with their hands or with the help of simple tools. On average, 40 people die annually on the territory of the enterprise due to chemicals and accidental fires.

Maldives

The artificial island of Thilafushi, clogged to the very edges with garbage, stands out brightly from the paradise landscape of the tropical Maldives. The government of the country decided to create this island because of the growing amount of garbage caused by the influx of tourists. Since 1992, garbage has been brought here from all the islands of the archipelago, and today its amount reaches several hundred tons daily. Thilafushi lies at a height of only 1 m above sea level, which increases the risk of chemicals and other wastes entering the ocean and the gradual destruction of the ecosystem.

USA

According to the Natural Resources Conservation Council, 40% of food produced in the US is wasted. At the same time, food is wasted at all stages from production to consumption: on farms, during transportation, in supermarkets and in the kitchen at home. According to statistics provided by the council, the average American family spends up to $2,000 a year on food, which they end up throwing away. In addition, many US states are suffering from severe drought, while in neighboring states 25% of the water is wasted, namely, to irrigate fields with grain, which ultimately does not go to consumption. The problem is also with landfills: they produce gases into the air that are no less dangerous to the environment than carbon dioxide.

junk ideas

Garbage in the modern world often finds a second use for itself - in art, the restaurant business, and even construction. But one way or another, all the original garbage ideas and projects are aimed at once again drawing people's attention to the overabundance of waste production in the modern world. For Copenhagen, for example, the architectural firm BIG has designed a new generation incinerator. The plant will not only process garbage into electricity, but also remind citizens of the amount of carbon dioxide generated. Each time 1 ton of carbon dioxide is produced, a ring of smoke with a diameter of 30 m will be emitted from the plant's chimney. At night, the ring will be illuminated in different colors. The roof of the plant will be used as a ski slope. Lifts to the top of the descent will pass along the sides of the plant. The construction of the plant is planned to be completed in 2016.

Spanish artist Francesco de Pajaro travels the world with his project Art is Trash and creates art installations from garbage in different cities. Francesco finds a pile of garbage on the street and in a few hours he repaints and moves the objects in this dump so that they turn into an installation. As a result, playful characters are obtained from discarded boxes, pieces of furniture and plastic bottles.

First in the United States, and later in Europe, the dumpster diving movement, in other words, picking garbage cans, has become widespread in the past few years. The followers of the movement look for leftover food and suitable clothes in the garbage, thus trying to do their part in the fight against overproduction and overconsumption of goods. Many divers manage to find kilograms of fresh vegetables, and some even make a boat out of found building materials.

There are many other examples of non-trivial use of garbage. Artists collect paintings from it, photographers create a whole series of portraits of people surrounded by their own garbage, entrepreneurs open restaurants with dishes from groceries that were not redeemed on time in the supermarket, architects and planners use garbage as a building material, as, for example, in Japan when building an artificial island Odaibo. Throughout its history, garbage has come a long way of transformation - from a foul-smelling landfill to a modern art gallery. But, unfortunately, the very basic attitude of people towards waste has not changed, and people have not really learned anything over thousands of years: we still do not stop consuming immoderately.

Probably, many watched the Disney animated film "WALL-E" and remember what our deserted planet looked like, turned into a dump. Let's leave cartoons to children, but we, adults, should think about whether this plot is prophetic, and will everything end as well as in a cartoon? In confirmation, we offer you a tour of the countries, however, we will not consider sights, but garbage dumps. Perhaps such a tour is not the most pleasant, but informative and instructive. So, 8 major landfills in the world.

You don't have to travel far to see how gigantic a dump can get. Located in the village of Salaryevo is a large mountain covered with sparse vegetation. However, this is not a natural relief, but a landfill mothballed in 2007.

At the beginning 60s years, it was an ordinary ravine, where garbage gradually began to be brought from the capital and nearby settlements. Over time, the height of the garbage mountain reached 80 meters, while the area was slightly less than 60 hectares, and then it was closed.

2. Fresh Kills, USA

Competing with the Chinese wall in size is another human creation - the Fresh Kills landfill in America. Today it is also closed, they are trying to clear and level the territory, but its size continues to amaze.

It was opened in 1948, over time, its height exceeded the Statue of Liberty by as much as 25 meters. It happened that about 13 thousand tons of household and industrial waste delivered by barges.

3. Landfill in New York, USA

Continuing our journey through the "garbage places" of the United States, we stop at a landfill in New York, which was opened not so long ago, in 2001, but has already managed to earn a reputation as a large landfill. Over 10 thousand tons of waste are shipped to it daily. The landfill can “boast” with a 25-meter mountain of garbage.

4. Puente Hills in California, USA

Our last stop in America is California and the Puente Hills landfill, which covers an area of ​​almost 280 hectares. Over 1,500 trucks transport waste there every day. On average, the amount of garbage in the landfill increases by 10 thousand tons per day. Here the highest mountain of garbage reaches 150 meters.

Everyone knows that it is impossible to throw electronic devices into ordinary landfills, it is even prohibited by the legislation of most countries. There are etc. However, old equipment from America, Japan, European countries ends up at the Agbogbloshi landfill in Accra.

And it gets to Ghana not in a mystical way, but through all sorts of customs tricks - under the guise of humanitarian aid, second-hand goods. The situation is aggravated by the attempts of local residents to extract non-ferrous metals from devices, they do it unprofessionally, dangerous toxins enter the environment.

6. Hawaiian archipelago, Pacific Ocean

So we have reached the largest landfill on the planet. Location - the north of the Pacific Ocean, an uninhabited archipelago-dump, with an area of ​​​​6 thousand square kilometers. Plastic predominates among the waste; during the decomposition of garbage, toxins that are extremely dangerous for all living things are released.

Chittangog is not exactly a landfill, but rather a graveyard of old ships, which is officially called a ship recycling center. In fact, this is a place where thousands of workers (local residents) are engaged in dismantling for minimal pay, and none of them have heard about labor protection and the environment. Lead waste, engine oil, all this remains on the shore.

Why, at the end of the tour, did we look into the UK, because there are no giant landfills there? It's just that the amount of waste in Foggy Albion, which is generated per year, is twice the annual amount of garbage in all eurozone countries.

According to studies conducted by the UN, every year developed countries produce more than 50 million tons of "electronic" waste. However, only 25% of this volume of waste is recycled in accordance with environmental requirements. And it is quite possible that another 50 million tons of electronic industry waste is produced by less developed countries.

All this garbage, under various pretexts, is taken out of the habitat of the "golden billion". The cost of dumping hazardous waste in an industrialized country can be as high as $5,000 per ton, and if exported to one of the African countries, the price can be about $10 per ton. This is about 1/1000 of the cost of recycling in any industrialized country.

Above is one of Peter Hugo's photos. Below is the world's largest electronics dump, which has formed near the settlement of Agbogbloshi, in Ghana. Recycling E-garbage in Ghana annually from 100 to 250 million dollars. 20 thousand people work at the landfill itself, another 200 thousand people are somehow connected with the processing of technological waste (family members of miners, security guards, resellers, logistics, corrupt officials, etc.)

And four others, no less interesting.

Agbogbloshie in Accra is a workplace for several thousand locals who are trying to find the right parts among the waste. From completely faulty devices, they are trying to extract non-ferrous metals by burning, as a result of which tons of toxins are released into the atmosphere.

Here the sun never peeps through: it is always hidden by leaden clouds of caustic, corrosive smoke. Bonfires are constantly burning throughout the landfill - local residents burn components, cables and other electronic waste on them in order to collect copper, lead and other metals that are used in the production of electronics after the plastic is burned. This "gathering" helps them survive - having collected enough metal, you can hand it over to the receivers and buy some food.

The average salary of people working at the dump for 12 hours a day is about $ 2 per working day.

The electronic dump at Agbogbloshie is not an indication that Africa has begun to use electronic devices at a great pace. This is evidence of the exorbitant greed of large European and American companies. This practice is a flagrant violation of the Basel Convention, which prohibits the importation of toxic waste into developing countries.

Exporters of garbage circumvent international law - they import electronic devices that have exhausted their resource under the guise of humanitarian aid for the computerization of schools, universities, hospitals, etc. Once this “help” has crossed the border, it is simply brought in by trucks and dumped in a heap. On which local specialists then crawl, choosing something that has survived.

Yet it is considered the largest in the entire globe. It is located in the North Pacific Ocean. The main garbage taken out here is plastic. The area of ​​this giant landfill is about 6 thousand square kilometers. Toxins released by decaying waste poison both animals and humans. Basically, marine life suffers from the overgrown landfill, among which there are a lot of mammals: whales and dolphins. The archipelago in the Hawaiian Islands, where garbage is dumped, is incompatible with the life of living organisms. However, a large number of people come to the islands who want to find something useful there. For many of them, this is their only source of income.

New landfill, New York, USA

Once in this largest metropolis there was an old giant landfill, where waste from all over the city was taken. In 2001, the old landfill was closed and a new one was opened in its place the same year.

13,000 tons of waste are dumped daily at this huge landfill. The New York dump even has its own local attractions, such as a huge mountain of garbage 25 meters high. There are not as many tramps in this dump as in Grye.

Puente Hills, Los Angeles, USA

8,000 tons of rubbish per day and several thousand trucks full of rubbish daily. Quite a lot for the city of angels and the sun, considering, for example, that in neighboring Canada the largest landfill in area is half the size of Puente Hills in Los Angeles.

Collective landfills in the UK

Although the British are concerned about the huge amount of garbage in their landfills, but so far they cannot cope with this problem. One only The UK throws away twice as much trash as all the eurozone countries combined , although Britain is far from the first place in terms of population.

Peter Hugo is a self-taught photographer born in 1976 in Johannesburg. Documents social problems around the world, but focuses on Africa and other developing countries. Below is his photo in Agbogbloshie (Ghana) :

David Akore, 18 years old

Under the 1989 Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, which has been ratified by 170 countries, developed countries must notify developing countries of the importation of toxic wastes.

", I propose to see photos by Irishman Andrew McConnell and Peter Hugo, a photographer from Johannesburg (South Africa). Both series are united by the fact that they were filmed in the vicinity of Accra, the capital of the African Republic of Ghana. We are talking about Agbogbloshi, the world's largest dump of electronics brought from Europe and America in violation of the Basel Convention governing the export of toxic waste to developing countries.

01 . Range.

02 . Agbogbloshie's e-waste dump in Accra is one of the largest in the world. Hundreds of thousands of decommissioned European and American electronic equipment are brought here every month. Locals dig through this garbage, choosing what else can be used somehow. For disposal, the most primitive method is used - equipment is burned on fires and thus non-ferrous metals are extracted from it, mainly copper.

03 . An old monitor against the background of burning heaps of garbage.

04 . Sorting electronic waste at the Agbogbloshi landfill is not only done by adults, but also by teenagers. After working 12 hours a day in a landfill, a teenager can earn about $2.

05 . Children are busy parsing CRT monitors. Most of the recyclers at the Agbogbloshie landfill simply burn the copper out of the old circuit boards on fires.

06 . The warehouse is completely crammed with old system blocks. The Agbogbloshi landfill employs nearly 20,000 people in Accra.

07 . Those parts of old computers that still retain some kind of performance will be removed and sold. There are many firms in Ghana that buy old computers from Western countries for $10 each. After processing, such a computer is resold ten times more expensive.

08 . Still working parts are removed from the board and put back into action.

09 . To extract non-ferrous metals, computer scrap is simply burned on fires. With this method of "recycling" a huge amount of highly toxic substances enters the environment. In the soil at the Agbogbloshi landfill, the content of lead, cadmium and mercury is several hundred times higher than all conceivable norms.

10 . Livestock roam the landfill; right in the middle of clouds of poisonous smoke.

11 . In 2008, a study initiated by Greenpeace found lead, chlorine dioxide, cadmium, antimony, polyvinyl chloride and other toxic substances in the highest concentrations in soil samples taken at Agbogbloshie.

12 . David Akore, 18 years old.

13 . Under the 1989 Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, which has been ratified by 170 countries, developed countries must notify developing countries of the importation of toxic wastes.

14 . Every year, developed countries produce from 20 to 50 million tons of electronic waste, 70% of which, bypassing the Basel Convention, is exported to the poorest countries under the guise of second-hand goods or humanitarian aid.

15 . Yaqub Al-Hassan, 20 years old.
Buyers of non-ferrous metals value copper the most, followed by brass, aluminum, and zinc. A working hard drive can be sold for $20.

16 . Computer monitors replace chairs for the inhabitants of the landfill.

17 . Ibrahim Sally, 17 years old.

18 . Yau Francis, 17 years old.
It is clear that there is no question of any safety precautions, teenagers are constantly dealing with toxic substances such as lead, mercury, cadmium and beryllium.

19 . Lunch break. Bon appetit!