Recycling in Russia

Recycling in Russia has never really been an issue. Trash was simply dumped into specially designated areas outside the city. Today there plan has not changed much. Although today such dumping grounds are called ordnance yards and trash is often being referred to as hard domestic waste.

The mounts of trash can evolve into carbon monoxide, methane and other toxins. More so, pathogenic bacteria and disease-transmitting rodents only make the situation worse. Other countries learned to turn trash into real money. In Russia however, recycling has a long way to go before it will ever be turned into business.

There are only four recycling facilities and combustion plants in Russia. According to State Sanitary Control, those combustion plants are practically all dead. The thing is, they use foreign technologies that do not work in our country. More often the problem is solved in the following way: trash simply gets dumped in the nearest forest or even better, by some freeway.

Nearly 7 billion tons! Of domestic waste is accumulated in Russia annually; 6 million tons—in Moscow's region (up to 350kg of trash per person per year).