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Black sea in a necklace of pet-tare and with a smell of dioxin perfumes
T. Pinchuk,
Professor with amendments , principal of Sevastopol polytechnic school, Doctor of Education
Sevastopol polytechnic school team developed suggestions for waste management. Those suggestions became the result of environmental activity of students, their lecturers and parents for realization of ideas of international UNESCO project «The Great Volga River Route – uniting of three seas (the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea) to save World Heritage with a help of Information and Communicative Technologies».
In 2005 the school became an associated member of UNESCO and in frames of mentioned above project it developed its own initiative «Cleaning of coastal areas from plastic tare», which has practical importance.
Annually 150 mln. tons of synthetic plastic are produced. Little by little it is accumulated on the surface of the Earth. Carcinogenic substances, chlorine-containing components – dioxins, ruining human’s endocrine system and provoking immunodeficiency, get into the atmosphere by its burning or decomposition on dumps.
School defined the main goal to develop a mini-press suitable for public utilities usage to press plastic tare, huge masses of which is accumulated on the seacoast of Sevastopol after the summer season. To reach that aim academic-research activity of students was organized and supported by 11 workgroups involving more than 60 participants. As a result of two actions «Second life for plastic tare!» parks and city beaches were cleaned and 4,5 thousand plastic bottles were gathered.
After detail studying of problems of city cleaning from plastic tare, we’ve made following conclusions:
1.Order of the Cabinet of Ministers ¹ 915 June 26, 2001 «About introduction of collecting system, sorting, transporting, treatment and utilization of waste as second raw material» isn’t fully implemented on the territory of Sevastopol.
2. Nowadayscity public utilities aren’t ready to solve the problem of collecting, packing, transporting and treatment of plastic tare.
3. It is necessary to create a new system of work with plastic tare in Sevastopol. This system should be of a closed type, and it should include collecting, packing, transporting and treatment of PET.
Besides it is also necessary to improve legislation, oriented at the reduction of its dangerous impact on the environment by isolation of waste from ground water.
This problem should be solved at the state and city level. At the city level it is necessary promote creating the city system of dealing with MSW, which would let this sphere to be developed and improved. It is necessary to provide recycling (rationalized system of collecting and recycling of municipal solid waste components into the products, which have use value).
Different fractions should be utilized separately from each other by the most economical and ecologic acceptable methods.
It’s also necessary to provide paybacks for PET tare.
On the basis of the foregoing, it’s necessary to define priorities in sphere of dealing with waste products in the following sequence:
- To assume measures for prevention of waste generation;
- To minimize hazard substance content in waste products and damage caused by them;
- To utilize, recycle, compost using waste products components;
- To bury the remaining portion of waste products without damage for environment;
- To implement the obligatory for every city district system of separate (selective) collection of MSW;
- To fix city community with total costs;
- To take into account one general principle by developing programs of selective collection of MSW «the less efforts are required from residents, the higher participation level of them will be observed»;
- To allocate a duty to legislative authorities of municipal government to pass laws about MSW utilization, which will be passed and discussed by involving all sides interested and taking part in process dealing with MSW;
- To adopt principle «producer’s responsibility», i. e. producer is responsible for processing of products produced by him when they became waste. To include waste disposal costs in disbursing price – and in such way to implement a principle «pollutant pays»;
- To make limits for waste disposal, which will promote more regulated activity and control in sphere of MSW;
- To develop and adopt city laws about special rules for management of dangerous waste;
- To forbid burial of those types of waste, which can be recycled;
- To change the structures and new tariff; which will include all costs, return on investments, profit earning and creation of development fund necessary for effective waste management;
- Utilization and MSW burial points at landfill and dumps to make corresponding to sanitary standards and demands of environmental security;
- To create a fund for existing waste management system modernization, to invest creation of improved landfills and their reclamation when they won’t be used.
After making economic assessment of plastic tare pledge price students came to the conclusions that if to define the PET pledge price without significant loss for consumers it may be 20-50 kopeykas.
According to calculations producers and city income (without tax deduction) will be approximately 30 million hryvnas per year. It is calculated by taking a difference between consumers’ expenses for buying drinks in plastic tare with pledge price and for buying drinks in plastic tare without this price.
At the cost of this income 110 PET collection points can be maintained in Sevastopol and its suburbs.
In every city district it’s reasonable to locate such points in microdistricts. The total number of collection points in city districts and maintenance expenses are represented in students research work. Construction of these collection points will cost 10 million hryvnas.
Total costs of PET collection points maintenance in four districts of Sevastopol is 5 million 234 thousand hryvnas.
In result of including plastic tare pledge price in total drinks price the income into the city and producers budget will be amounted not with thousands but millions of hryvnas, which was confirmed by calculations. It proves the research effectiveness of this initiative.
You may learn the calculation methodology more detailed and use it not only for a city, but also for district, region or country.
«Innovations and investments for sustainable development of the Sevastopol region in context of the Eastern Partnership»
Sergiy Moskvin,
PhD in Economy, Deputy Head of the State Agency of Ukraine for Investments and Innovations,
In frames of the EU initiative «Eastern Partnership» Ukraine has an important place among other post-soviet member-states (Moldova, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan).
«Eastern Partnership» program covers in general three priority spheres:
- ensure proper state management and rule of law;
- promote the Associations Agreement between the EU and Ukraine coming into effect, including free trade area creation;
- sustainable development.
In sphere of sustainable development two groups of priorities are determined:
- energy sector, energy efficiency, environment protection, climate changes counteraction, transport;
- regional development and development of rural areas.
In these spheres it is almost impossible to reach significant improvements at the current material and technical basis, outdated production capacity and inadequate to the modern needs infrastructure. It goes without saying that system investing is strongly necessary, and it becomes even more complicated because of world economic crisis and inner political instability in Ukraine. But «Eastern Partnership» should be considered particularly as a powerful stimulus for investments attracting to develop innovative decisions approved in the EU countries, and also Ukrainian research and technology projects, which match high criteria of estimation and current challenges.
The Law of Ukraine «About main principles of sustainable development» may become a significant stimulus and support for realization of «Eastern Partnership» tasks dealing with ensuring of sustainable development, which is extremely important from the point of view of «greening» its priorities. Now the draft of this law is introduced to Ukrainian Parliament for consideration.
The fact that this legislation determines main principles of sustainable development as a priority of domestic and foreign policy of Ukraine is of great importance. According to this legislation sustainable development is such a model of society development, which lets to cover the requirements of present generations, and not to threaten the possibilities of future generations to cover their requirements, when economic, social and environmental aspects of development are combined and balanced. This definition coincides completely with nature protection organizations’ and Green parties’ understanding of the notion of sustainable development.
Sustainable development of Ukraine according to the legislation should base on such principles:
- stability of development processes, which means balancing tempos of economic and social development with nature systems possibilities to support these tempos with mineral and biological resources and biosphere capability scope to assimilate pollution and other negative influence of economic activity;
- harmony of human’s development, which means to cover physical, spiritual and other needs of a human during the whole life, to enlarge choice possibilities and to give a guarantee of individual human rights and freedoms;
- social justice, which means to ensure equal access of citizens to all kinds of resources to give the economic support for development of a human, equal access for covering educational and cultural needs as a basis for spiritual and intelligence development.
The first task of sustainable development is to ensure stable economic development (i. e. faster GDP growth in comparison with population growth in frames of economic capacity of the ecosystem), which should be provided first of all at the basis of innovative products production and innovative technologies use. The second but not less important task is a stable development of a human, i. e. an enlargement process of choice possibilities in different spheres of life and a guarantee of individual human rights and freedoms (right for private security and life in proper environmental conditions, right for entrepreneurial initiative, information awareness, protection from harmful and low-quality goods and services, decision making process at the local, regional and national level etc.).
Autonomous Republic of Crimea is determined as region of special attraction by Ukrainian state authorities responsible for «Eastern Partnership» program realization. Nature protection and socioeconomic problems of Crimea can be solved just at the basis of sustainable development, which makes the appropriate statements of «Eastern Partnership» very important for the region. So taking into account still untapped innovative-investing potential of Sevastopol city and its adjacent territory, as the unit of administrative-territorial system with the special status directly connected with Autonomous Republic of Crimea by important dependency relations, should be considered as one of the priorities of «Eastern Partnership» program realization.
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