The Nubarashen dump site in Yerevan, with the Mont Ararat on the background
Here is a short summary of some of my findings after 3 weeks working on environmental issues in Yerevan for KASA, a swiss-Armenian NGO.
Many local environmental NGOs want to do awareness rising on environmental issues.
But how to teach people not to throw their garbage in the backyard, in the river or let it behind them after a pick nick in the nature, when there are only few garbage bins?
And when there are garbage bins, a lot of accumulated waste is not taken by the municipality but burnt in the garbage bin itself. When the garbage bin is emptied by the municipality, it is just brought outside of the city or the little town, where they are dumped.
Many towns in Armenia don’t have an official landfill site, and even if there is an official place to bring the waste, there is not a single sanitary landfill site in the country. The dump site is not protected against leaching, causing soil and water pollution. To reduce the space used for waste, the waste is burnt on the dump site all over the country. Added to the soil and air pollution of the waste itself, the burning causes air pollution.
The Nubarashen “landfill”, the dump site of Yerevan, is a huge smoking pile of burning waste. Dioxin and other polluting substances pollute the air of the capital, with associated risk for the population’s health.
« According to 2006 data provided by the Yerevan Municipality, 10% of the municipal waste that goes to Nubarashen landfill is paper, 25% is food waste, 3 percent is textile, 3% polyethylene, 5% is glass, 43% are stones and livestock excrement. »
source: www.hetq.am/eng/ecology/0706-waste.html
However, there are paper, glass and plastic recyclers in the country, but they recycle only very small amount of waste – for instance, the paper is received from some schools. They struggle to find enough waste to increase their business because there is almost no separation at source in Armenia.
Besides awareness rising actions that are starting now – mostly in schools- a management system for waste should be done, with a separation for recyclables (paper, glass, plastic), in order to reduce the amount of waste that gets to the landfill. Sanitary landfill sites should be organised.
Education should inform people that pollution is not only what can be seen, like garbage, but also air and soil pollution, so that Armenian understand the need to reduce pollution at source and not only burn or hide the garbage to make it disappear…
An interesting educational programme on environmental issues for schools (in English and Armenian) can be found on the Armenia Tree Project website .
A paper recycler
