The Town of the XXI Century
Series of reports on ecological situation in Central Asia

THE RESCUE FOR THE WORLD IS IN ITS CLEANNESS

What a person can do?

There is a saying "one is not a warrior in an open field". This is not true in case of ecology - here any one of us can make his or her own contribution into environmental protection. Below listed some simple recommendations for those who want to do something for it. And it is not true that such recommendations are like a drop of water in a sea. Follow these rules and we'll be able to say to our children: "We did everything we could to make the world a little bit cleaner".

Decrease in the amount of wastes. Recycling

Conclusions

The amount of wastes will increase until the progress in the fight for decreasing wastes will not go ahead of production. In connection with that politicians devote more attention to using market forces and economic stimulus to solve problems of utilization of solid and dangerous wastes, especially by decreasing the amount of wastes and by recycling.

This may cost a lot and may be difficult for developing countries to accomplish. Regulation and strict penalties for those breaking the rules have become a well known stick using which people are forced to do what they are supposed to, but there are other measures serving as a carrot to attract people, help them and reward them for using the preferred methods. There are lots of such methods, which include:

• adoption of the national policy accepting all classes of wastes and aimed at helping to utilize all of them;
• education of the public about wastes and the importance to prevent pollution, which can start at the grade school and continue up to the university programs for engineers and managers;
• government policy to lower subsidies for materials, water and fuel in order to raise economic benefits of waste reduction;
• government assistance in financing capital improvement programs, introducing clean technologies or technologies preventing pollution at the new or existing factories;
• government and industrial support of the program rewarding really "green" technologies, products and production lines;
• government support of the non-government public organizations aimed at supporting broad public assistance to progressive policies and programs related to wastes;
• state taxes on wastes, payments for collection of solid wastes in the cities and for fighting against the wastes (based on weight and volume) to stimulate decrease in the amount of wastes and development of recycling programs;
• legal requirement to use recycled materials in the products and packaging to stimulate demand for recycled materials.

* Do not throw away old toys or books, somebody may need them in the future
* If you have a piece of crop land, use food wastes to prepare fertilizers
* Find out where there is a place accepting scrap paper and bring your used paper to that place
* Write on both sides of the paper use more materials produced from recycled paper
* Try to buy drinks in recyclable bottles
* Try to be careful with recyclable glass bottles
* Do not take extra paper bags or packets in a store, if you are going to dispose of them immediately
* You can give you clothes to those in need
* Save electricity and fuel. Use public transportation, if it is not difficult