19. Waste
Waste management is undoubtedly one of Ukraine’s weaknesses, and it quickly strikes the casual visitor to Odesa. However, Ukraine is certainly not India, and the overall impression of Odesa is quite clean. This is reinforced by the ubiquitous orange-vested clean-up crews, brisk broom-wielding street cleaners, the large number of litter bins on the streets, and the equally numerous regular litter-pickers patrolling the streets.
So, the rubbish is being dealt with, and arriving in Odesa for the first time in January 2023, I find it a bit absurd. A state of emergency is in effect, air alarms and drone strikes are common, martial law is in place, and there’s general uncertainty about the future. Yet, the roads and streets are kept tidy. Why?
I get used to the sight, and when the city gets quite dusty in the spring, I am grateful that water trucks start to drive along the streets to clean the dust off the pavements. Having become a resident of the city myself, I understand - war or peace, life goes on. Perhaps, especially in times of war, it is all the more important to keep the city livable for its inhabitants to keep spirits up.
But this is general city maintenance. Waste management is something else. Living initially in an Airbnb on Bunin Street - now renamed Police Street - I’m shown the local trash bins. They are on the other side of the street, right next to the road. There is a row of them, three side by side, and it doesn’t matter where you throw what. There’s no need to separate the waste; in the end, it all goes to the same place anyhow. Very convenient, isn’t it?
Convenience comes at a price, of course. When I approach the bins, I can already smell them from a distance, and I can see crows pecking at something. I throw my plastic bag from as far away as possible with a high arc into a large open bin, which startles a flock of crows into flight, and leave quickly.
Later, I notice that sometimes the bins are overfilled, and sometimes there seems to be movement other than crows - perhaps rats - among the bags piled in there. From time to time, local homeless people rummage through the rubbish - unwashed ragged figures with long beards who smell as bad as the rubbish they are going through. It’s a sad sight.
The locals don’t seem to mind much, though. Right next to the bins on Bunin Street is a food kiosk, where I occasionally see Odesites sipping coffee from paper cups and chatting merrily. Behind the bins is one of the downtown schools. Across the road, on the same side of the street where I live, there are nice cafés, restaurants, and boutiques. Admittedly, the street is wide enough for the stench not to reach across.
In a few places in the center of Odesa, there are also bins for different types of rubbish. This seems to be an initiative of the local greens, and the bins are located in what could be described as show-off places: either near some city offices or progressive-looking institutions. When I ask my acquaintances what it means, they shrug their shoulders with an ironic grin and say that the garbage will end up in one place anyhow.
I suppose that’s the way it really is because wherever I live in Odesa, the waste bins are almost always a medium-sized ecological disaster - just a pile of bins sitting right on the street, spreading a foul stench and attracting homeless people, crows, and rats, often with junk like old furniture or some other larger piece of trash that won’t fit in the bin lying next to them.
Fortunately, at least they are emptied regularly. But where to? I decide to investigate. The English-language Kyiv Post published an article in 2020 titled “Buried in garbage, Ukraine in dire need of recycling plants,” which says that there are 6,107 legal and 26,610 illegal landfills in the country, most of which are full and life-threatening. The article also mentions the deaths of an ecologist and three firefighters trying to extinguish a fire in a landfill somewhere in Lviv oblast.
At the time this Kyiv Post article was published, there were no waste recycling plants in all of Ukraine, and only 6% of waste was recycled, solely through private initiatives. (By comparison, about half of all municipal waste in the European Union is recycled.) The article also discusses citizens’ initiatives to sort and divert waste for recycling and recovery but notes that without proper legislation, it is impossible to force local authorities to change their current waste (non-)management practices.
I must admit, the war has done nothing to improve the situation. While it has brought Ukraine to the attention of many international aid organizations, none of them seems to have contributed to waste management in Odesa. And, of course, there are more important things to do...
A major clean-up of Odesa’s beaches and coastal waters takes place in June 2023, but the reason for this is the destruction of the Kakhovka dam. The water unleashed from the dam floods the entire lower Dnieper area, destroying houses and structures, killing both animals and people, and dumping huge quantities of rubbish and waste into the Black Sea - from simple piles of earth and tree branches to animal and human carcasses, even broken houses. Here and there, the current dislodges mines anchored to the seabed, some of which explode. The beaches of the city and oblast of Odesa are declared an even stricter no-go zone, and once the military clears away the most dangerous debris, people help clean up the beaches. But this is a one-off emergency operation. Not all Odesites take beach water pollution seriously, as I can see for myself when I walk along Langeron beach - there are plenty of summer revelers who enjoy dipping their toes in the sea in defiance of the bans.
In fact, some of these bathers are interviewed by the local press, and I remember one woman’s response, which goes something like this: “Once I’ve come to Odesa from far away, I’m not going to go back home just because of something like that. I want to get everything I came for.”
Okay. Actually, of course, it’s sad, not funny. The same goes for the garbage management, which becomes particularly noticeable during the warm summer months, when a sickening, sweetish stench hovers over my street every other day. No matter how quickly the rubbish bins are emptied, something is constantly rotting and festering, emitting a foul stink. Trying to romanticize the situation, I imagine this is how Odesa described by Isaac Babel, the Odesa of Benya Krik and Froym Gratsch, must have smelled more than a century ago. But that’s a cheap consolation.
So, the rubbish is being dealt with, and arriving in Odesa for the first time in January 2023, I find it a bit absurd. A state of emergency is in effect, air alarms and drone strikes are common, martial law is in place, and there’s general uncertainty about the future. Yet, the roads and streets are kept tidy. Why?
I get used to the sight, and when the city gets quite dusty in the spring, I am grateful that water trucks start to drive along the streets to clean the dust off the pavements. Having become a resident of the city myself, I understand - war or peace, life goes on. Perhaps, especially in times of war, it is all the more important to keep the city livable for its inhabitants to keep spirits up.
But this is general city maintenance. Waste management is something else. Living initially in an Airbnb on Bunin Street - now renamed Police Street - I’m shown the local trash bins. They are on the other side of the street, right next to the road. There is a row of them, three side by side, and it doesn’t matter where you throw what. There’s no need to separate the waste; in the end, it all goes to the same place anyhow. Very convenient, isn’t it?
Convenience comes at a price, of course. When I approach the bins, I can already smell them from a distance, and I can see crows pecking at something. I throw my plastic bag from as far away as possible with a high arc into a large open bin, which startles a flock of crows into flight, and leave quickly.
Later, I notice that sometimes the bins are overfilled, and sometimes there seems to be movement other than crows - perhaps rats - among the bags piled in there. From time to time, local homeless people rummage through the rubbish - unwashed ragged figures with long beards who smell as bad as the rubbish they are going through. It’s a sad sight.
The locals don’t seem to mind much, though. Right next to the bins on Bunin Street is a food kiosk, where I occasionally see Odesites sipping coffee from paper cups and chatting merrily. Behind the bins is one of the downtown schools. Across the road, on the same side of the street where I live, there are nice cafés, restaurants, and boutiques. Admittedly, the street is wide enough for the stench not to reach across.
In a few places in the center of Odesa, there are also bins for different types of rubbish. This seems to be an initiative of the local greens, and the bins are located in what could be described as show-off places: either near some city offices or progressive-looking institutions. When I ask my acquaintances what it means, they shrug their shoulders with an ironic grin and say that the garbage will end up in one place anyhow.
I suppose that’s the way it really is because wherever I live in Odesa, the waste bins are almost always a medium-sized ecological disaster - just a pile of bins sitting right on the street, spreading a foul stench and attracting homeless people, crows, and rats, often with junk like old furniture or some other larger piece of trash that won’t fit in the bin lying next to them.
Fortunately, at least they are emptied regularly. But where to? I decide to investigate. The English-language Kyiv Post published an article in 2020 titled “Buried in garbage, Ukraine in dire need of recycling plants,” which says that there are 6,107 legal and 26,610 illegal landfills in the country, most of which are full and life-threatening. The article also mentions the deaths of an ecologist and three firefighters trying to extinguish a fire in a landfill somewhere in Lviv oblast.
At the time this Kyiv Post article was published, there were no waste recycling plants in all of Ukraine, and only 6% of waste was recycled, solely through private initiatives. (By comparison, about half of all municipal waste in the European Union is recycled.) The article also discusses citizens’ initiatives to sort and divert waste for recycling and recovery but notes that without proper legislation, it is impossible to force local authorities to change their current waste (non-)management practices.
I must admit, the war has done nothing to improve the situation. While it has brought Ukraine to the attention of many international aid organizations, none of them seems to have contributed to waste management in Odesa. And, of course, there are more important things to do...
A major clean-up of Odesa’s beaches and coastal waters takes place in June 2023, but the reason for this is the destruction of the Kakhovka dam. The water unleashed from the dam floods the entire lower Dnieper area, destroying houses and structures, killing both animals and people, and dumping huge quantities of rubbish and waste into the Black Sea - from simple piles of earth and tree branches to animal and human carcasses, even broken houses. Here and there, the current dislodges mines anchored to the seabed, some of which explode. The beaches of the city and oblast of Odesa are declared an even stricter no-go zone, and once the military clears away the most dangerous debris, people help clean up the beaches. But this is a one-off emergency operation. Not all Odesites take beach water pollution seriously, as I can see for myself when I walk along Langeron beach - there are plenty of summer revelers who enjoy dipping their toes in the sea in defiance of the bans.
In fact, some of these bathers are interviewed by the local press, and I remember one woman’s response, which goes something like this: “Once I’ve come to Odesa from far away, I’m not going to go back home just because of something like that. I want to get everything I came for.”
Okay. Actually, of course, it’s sad, not funny. The same goes for the garbage management, which becomes particularly noticeable during the warm summer months, when a sickening, sweetish stench hovers over my street every other day. No matter how quickly the rubbish bins are emptied, something is constantly rotting and festering, emitting a foul stink. Trying to romanticize the situation, I imagine this is how Odesa described by Isaac Babel, the Odesa of Benya Krik and Froym Gratsch, must have smelled more than a century ago. But that’s a cheap consolation.
Comments
Post a Comment