In the US and the UK, we are tough on litter bugs, so much so that the British government has unveiled plans for a “pay-as-you-throw” scheme which means that households face higher council charges if they recycle less than their green neighbours. Councils must offer people the chance to recycle at least five types of refuse, such as paper, glass, cans, food and plastic. They would then count the number of black sacks used by households for non-recyclable rubbish or weigh their bins and they would have to return any money raised to greener residents. It’s all part of UK environment secretary David Miliband’s target to recycle 40 per cent of all household rubbish within the next three years. He believes that cutting waste and landfill will help tackle climate change.
Unfortunately, Bulgaria lags behind in the race to recycle and to avoid littering. Take a drive down any highway in Bulgaria and you will pass some amazing scenery; lush green forests, chalk cliffs dropping into a sparkling sea, golden sandy beaches, heath-land and hilltops where sheep and goatherds roam. Yet the hedgerows and roadsides are littered with plastic bags, cigarette packets and bottles. It is clear that many people think nothing of throwing their rubbish from their car window. This in turn leads to a vicious cycle of “if everyone else is doing it, one more piece of litter won’t matter.”
The sad thing is, that Bulgarian friends are eager to tell me the story of how God made Bulgaria. It goes something like this; God created the world and gave a piece to each nationality, but he forgot about the Bulgarians. The Bulgarians went to God and said “What about us? We have nowhere to live.” God was distraught, so he pushed some mountains up to the sea and said, “Here, I am giving you a little piece of paradise.” My Bulgarian friends are proud of their country, its beauty and its temperate climate, yet they seem to be blind to the fact that they are blighting this wonderful land with litter.
One of the largest problems of waste management in Bulgaria is the volume of construction. Building waste blights every new development and often when builders are asked to remove rubbish from a site, they either make a half hearted attempt, set fire to it leaving behind charred waste which does not burn easily or they dump it elsewhere in a kind of “out of sight, out of mind” mentality.
Many also reshape the landscape by leaving behind “mountains” of unwanted earth. These “mountains” often affect the drainage of the land and can cause mudslides onto roads when wet. In the developer’s defence, they need adequate managed facilities, which will allow them to dump their waste legally. Once these facilities are in place, the government can then tackle issues of fly tipping.
Bulgaria needs waste management inspectors to monitor and control this. In villages, this could be the mayor; at the roadside, this could be the police.
Litter does not only come from unused or unwanted building materials. The waste problem is compounded by the ignorance of the general public, especially building crews who walk from local shops back to their building sites leaving a trail of empty coffee cups, water bottles, cigarette packets, empty lighters, crisp and sweet wrappers. The list is endless. Crew workers interviewed seemed unaware that they had created a problem and most just shrugged and said “so what?”
Many citizens do recycle their own waste. Bulgarians are thrifty people and will put anything from a plastic bottle to a tin can to good use. I have seen Coke bottles used in gardens, upturned on sticks, to scare birds. Tins are often used for flowers, wood, paper and cardboard is burned in winter for warmth, but many do not have adequate means to dispose of all of their waste. Large, unsightly metal container bins deposited randomly in each neighbourhood, making it difficult for some people to reach. Kiro, a 65-year-old man living on the main route between Varna and Golden Sands, complained, “My nearest container is almost a kilometre away. I suffer from chronic arthritis and it is difficult to carry my rubbish to the container.” He has resorted to burning it in his garden and he feeds any food waste to his chickens and dog, but many people in this situation may be tempted to dump their waste at the roadside.
The communal container system of waste disposal also encourages fly tipping because there is no accountability as to who is responsible for the waste deposited there unlike the system where each household is responsible for it’s own dustbin.
Unmanaged waste brings disease for both humans and animals. It causes environmental damage as well as many other problems. A simple cigarette butt can take as long as plastic to degrade and causes toxins composed of cellulose acetate to leak out into the soil and water systems. Many fish, birds and marine animals were found to have cigarette butts in their stomachs.*
In a joint EU / Bulgaria report conducted in February 2007 entitled “Operational Programme 2007 - 2013”,* it was noted that there was a “Relatively low level of perception of environmental issues and needs from local administrations, managers, firms and residents.”
Grants from the European Regional Development Agency have been made to Bulgaria to tackle environmental issues, and in line with EU policy on waste management and environmental care*, TV ads have started encouraging people to recycle household waste, but many places do not have the new recycling bins.
In public areas in major cities like Sofia and Varna there has been a concerted effort to reduce litter and to ensure that public places are “garbage free.” The Sea Garden in Varna now has a stream of litterbins available on every walkway, they also employ high-speed green machines (designed and built in Falkirk, Scotland), which clean the roadsides within the park and have made a notable difference. Vasko and his wife Sevda commented, “We love to bring our child to the park because the play areas are very clean. In the apartment block where we live this is not so.” Cleaning up these areas has meant that people take pride in their surroundings, respecting them and using the facilities available for waste disposal. There is however, one area of which Bulgaria can be justly proud, and that is that it has 11 Blue Flag beaches.* The Blue Flag is an international award for environmentally friendly beaches and marinas world-wide. Top resorts like Golden Sands and Sunny Beach are some of the current flag holders and it is easy to understand why. The sands are regularly groomed and the resorts have plenty of bins.
Sadly, in the Roma quarters waste management barely exists. There are few waste containers available and there are certainly not enough to cope with the amount of rubbish produced by the community. What happens is that waste is deposited all over the quarter in huge piles. In the heat, it begins to rot and smell, attract vermin and provide a fire hazard amongst other dangers. One Roma community told me that no one came to collect their rubbish. When the wind blows, litter is strewn all over the area. One inhabitant, Filip, said, “We are left to live in a trash can. Nobody wants to help us or make our village better for us.”
Collecting and managing waste costs money and people’s attitudes cannot be changed over night, although I recently heard of an old Bulgarian woman living in a village on the outskirts of Rousse. She is a keen environmentalist and despairs at the sight of any roadside litter. She often gives callers a supermarket carrier bag asking them to fill it with litter in return for a mug of black tea with a slice of bread and jam. An English family in Chepelare went for regular walks with their children and encouraged them to fill a black bag with litter, then rewarded the kids with a trip to the sweetshop. If everyone pulls together, respects the country we live in, and makes a small attempt to tackle litter issues locally, others will follow and together we can all keep Bulgaria tidy!
Sources
*1. www.cigarettelitter.org
*2. available online at www.eufunds.bg
*3. www.europa.eu (environment, waste management)
* 4 www.blueflag.org
