Public waste sorting points have practically turned into small landfills, so the owners of the territories, including the municipalities of Pieriga region, are trying to get rid of them. Let people sort on their own if they want to. Riga is still trying to maintain a network of public sorting points, but this is obviously pointless.
If containers for intelligent waste sorting are placed somewhere, the most diverse possible waste is immediately dumped there, while old mattresses, toilets, TVs and tires are placed around them. And it does not matter whether the containers have paper or glass written on top. The inside of the container will be the same. Why? Because it's free. As in communism.
Babīte municipality found that such waste (mis)management procedure is not worth it already last year. On the way to work, people come to a public sorting point, dump whatever they don't need at home, and then go and call the council to announce that the place is a mess. And indeed - they're not lying, the view is terrible. The recreation area created at the Piņķi reservoir also systematically turns into a waste area. No matter how many containers are placed, how often they are cleaned. Jānis Ozoliņš, the head of the Real Estate Department of Babīte Municipality Council, says that the municipality has agreed with the territory manager on more frequent cleaning of the territory, but it does not help much, and waste removers are also protesting. There is no charge for removing sorted waste if the waste is actually sorted. Paper to paper, glass to glass, etc. If the container looks like any old landfill, then the standard fee is charged.
Already last year, the municipality slowly started to tell its inhabitants that it would be necessary to do waste sorting on their own. Such an idea is not liked by those who really want to sort, but are not able to arrange space for containers, as well as those who like to throw their old mattresses and toilets out at the Piņķi reservoir. The end of public sorting was announced this spring from June 1. However, due to public opposition, a transitional period has now been introduced. The toilet will have to be carried further, because all three sorting points in Babīte municipality will be combined into one large one and will be out of sight - in a real estate owned by the municipality called "Notekas", next to the treatment plant. However, this is not planned as a long-term solution. At the moment, it is planned to leave this last public sorting point in Babīte only until autumn. In Mārupe, to which Babīte is added with the elections, there has been no such public waste site for a long time. In this respect, the waste management procedures will be the same in both parts of the newly formed municipality.
During the summer, homeowners have to figure out where to place the sorting containers and make sheds for them. In Babīte municipality, individual sorting containers are provided free of charge for apartment house managers, associations and legal entities, while private house residents are provided with containers or their alternative - bags for a one-time fee, and further removal is provided free of charge. So, from the autumn in Babīte, the residents will have to look after their containers so that a toilet will not be placed next to them. But if someone puts the toilet next to the paper container, then the landlord must figure out how to get rid of it. We can only hope that the old toilets will not join the old tires in the forests and ditches after the waste reform.
With the gradual disposal of public waste sorting points by Pieriga municipalities, this post-Soviet throwback is still being maintained in the capital. Although the organizers of the Riga waste management understand that those mini-landfills cause problems in the urban environment, they do not intend to give them up, because it is good to sort waste. In addition, as the fee for the removal of unsorted waste increases, the demand of the population for sorting increases. At least formally, public waste sorting points meet the demand of the population.
Although sorting points literally attract unsorted waste, birds and the homeless, the municipality intends not to close them but rather to open new ones.
Here is the statement from the Housing and Environment Department:
"With the entry into force of the new waste management regime and the change of waste area managers, several public sorting points were removed. Due to regular additions of other waste in separately collected waste containers and large waste placed nearby, several site owners have refused to restore the previously removed public sorting points. We would like to inform you that work is currently underway to establish both new public sorting points and to restore the previous ones.”
So there will still be a place in Riga to dump the old toilets.
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