Buenos Aires Mayor Mauricio Macri of the Propuesta Republicana (PRO) and provincial Governor Daniel Scioli of the Frente Para la Victoria (FPV) joined together this morning in José León Suárez, in the province of Buenos Aires, to inaugurate a new rubbish treatment facility.

The Urban Solid Waste Treatment Plant III will be operated by approximately 140 employees of the Grupo Roggio, on three hectares of property belonging to the State Metropolitan Ecological Coordination Society (Ceamse). It is expected to treat about 1,000 tonnes of rubbish from the capital per day.

The treatment centre will separate paper, plastic, and glass from food and vegetal waste in an effort to reduce the quantity of rubbish destined for landfills. The city of Buenos Aires produces about 6,000 tonnes of rubbish every day, which is sent to the province for treatment or burial in landfills.

“We should all dedicate ourselves to a green city and country”, Macri said at a press conference held at the plant.

The opening of the plant is part of a larger effort, agreed upon by Macri and Scioli, to better manage and reduce the amount of city waste sent to the province by 78% over the next 18 months. The city and provincial leaders were obliged to discuss the issue at the start of December when the city failed to comply with the Zero Rubbish Law, put into place in 2007. The law called for a 50% reduction in waste sent to provincial landfills by 2012; the amount actually increased by 180% last year.

The new plan limits the amount of city waste sent to the province each day to 5.4 tonnes as of 1 January; 4.28 tonnes beginning in March; 4.15 tonnes as of July; 3.35 tonnes in November; and no more than 1.35 tonnes after June 2014.

Hugo Bilbao of the Provincial Body for Sustainable Development told Infobae “there needs to be a serious commitment to reducing waste. The step we’re taking today is very important.”

Greenpeace activists delivered to congress a giant cable cutter and manual in a symbolic demand to deputies to “diffuse the time bomb that is electronic waste”.

They demanded that the Minimum Premises for the Management of Electric and Electronic Waste (e-waste) Bill be approved. The bill has been discussed over the past four years and will be dropped if it is not voted before the end of the year.

Over 120,000 metric tonnes of electronic waste are produced in Argentina every year and there is no special government management system put in place.

“Electronic waste contains both toxic substances and valuable materials that can be recuperated and recycled,” said María Eugenia Testa, Political Director of Greenpeace Argentina.

The activists tried to enter congress and deliver their giant props to the three commissions who are in charge of the bill: National Resources, Industry and Budget and Households.

“We need a regulatory framework for environmental protection at a national level and [we need to] especially regulate the management of electrical and electronic equipment waste,” said senator Daniel Filmus from Frente Para La Victoria, who originally presented the proposal in 2008.

According to Escrap, a network of operators of e-waste and by-products industry in Argentina, only 24-32% of e-waste is currently recycled, reused or treated in any way in Argentina.

Between 35-40% is kept in households, offices and warehouses, as people are unsure of what to do with them. The remainder, a further 30-35%, is buried in landfills or left in open rubbish piles. There is also what Escrap calls an “informal sector”, groups who will look in these piles for cables, plates, engines or plastic and then sell them in “informal markets”.

This problem, however, is not unique to Argentina: worldwide, it is estimated that between 20 and 50 million tonnes of e-waste is discarded every year.

More than 80,000 people have signed the online petition for the bill to be approved by congress put online by Greenpeace at www.greenpeace.org.ar .

Read more about the issue in Natasha Sá Osório’s article from January 2012.

After an agreement was reached between the national Ministry of Labour and CEAMSE sanitary workers, waste collection was scheduled to continue as normal. Large black garbage bags had piled up on the streets of Buenos Aires since yesterday when workers halted all trucks from entering landfills and transfer facilities.

Workers had voiced concern over the 15 thousand tonnes of garbage produced every day from the city and province of Buenos Aires and demanded that government officials work to reduce emissions, create new landfills, and enforce the Zero Waste Law that was approved in 2005.

The CEAMSE union maintains that there will be an environmental collapse across the capital and its suburbs by mid-2013 if no one challenges the status quo.

In response to the union´s concerns, city government promised “to operate waste treatment plants and lower the amount of trash. ”

According to Pagina 12, Argentina´s Minister of Environment Diego Santilli had urged residents “not to take out trash” to avoid further accumulation of debris in the street, and suggested that the protest had a political background.

The strike was intended to last 48 hours and effect the landfills and transfer plants that process all solid waste from the city and province including North 3, González Catán and Ensenada, and Flores, Pompeya and Almirante Brown, respectively.

The City Council of San Miguel in the province of Buenos Aires has voted to tack a 30% tax increase onto businesses that produce excessive amounts of waste.

According to La Tecla, companies that generate more than 1,500 kilograms of waste per month, or 50 kilograms a day, will be sanctioned with a tax increase in fees to the city’s Sweeping, Cleaning and Lighting services.

InfoBAE reported that the increased tax was approved on April 12 at a City Council Meeting in an attempt to minimise negative environmental impact.

“This rate is necessary in our attempt to reduce the amount of waste emitted,” said City Council president, Máximo Luppino.

The measure has already drawn critics who say the city would be better off to just encourage recycling.

“We do not know if it really is intended to protect the environment or whether it will work as a mere tool collection mechanism,” said San Miguel Chamber of Commerce manager Silvana Segovia to local news sources.

Luppino said he expects the bill to be enacted promptly, even as soon as May.

Dismantling E-Waste in a warehouse. (Photo courtesy of Escrap)

2012 starts the final countdown for a decision to be made in Argentina about its electronic waste. Whilst last year the Minimum Premises for the Management of Electric and Electronic Waste (e-waste) Bill was passed in senate with 54 positive votes against one, it is now waiting to be formally discussed in Congress for it to be nationally instituted, after a meeting at the end of last year failed to achieve quorum.

This portion of urban solid waste, which includes not only mobile phones but also computers, batteries, television sets and other household appliances, is growing faster as people renew their electronics more often than ever. Only in the last year, one million computers, ten million mobile phones and 400 million batteries were discarded in Argentina. Each inhabitant throws away an average of 3kg of e-waste a year, totalling 120 thousand tonnes nationwide. This problem, however, is not unique to Argentina: worldwide, it is estimated that between 20 and 50 million tonnes of e-waste is discarded every year.

“We need a regulatory framework for environmental protection at national level and [we need to] especially regulate the management of electrical and electronic equipment waste,” said senator Daniel Filmus from Frente Para La Victoria, who originally presented the proposal in 2008.

The 28-page long proposed law suggests that producers be legally and financially responsible for the management of electronics that are no longer used by consumers, as well as the prohibition of toxic substances to be used in the manufacturing of new products. It also establishes the creation of a national infrastructure for disposal, storage, transport, reuse and recycling of electronic waste in coordination with the Secretary for Environment and Sustainable Development.

According to Escrap, a network of operators of e-waste and by-products industry in Argentina, only 24-32% of e-waste is currently recycled, reused or treated in any way in Argentina. So far, the rest of electronics have other final destinations.

Between 35-40% is kept in households, offices and warehouses, as people are unsure of what to do with them. The remainder, a further 30-35%, is buried in landfills or left in open rubbish piles. There is also what Escrap calls an “informal sector”, groups who will look in these piles for cables, plates, engines or plastic and then sell them in “informal markets”.  

An enormous amount of battery waste is generated. (Photo courtesy of Greenpeace by Martin Katz)

The dumping of e-waste is an environmental disaster. Most products are made up of metals and plastics that may take centuries to disintegrate, but also contain heavy metals and toxic substances which are damaging to our health and pollute the air, soil, rivers and water tables, such as lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyls and polybrominateddiphenyl. According to a report released by Greenpeace, some of the possible effects of contamination are cancers, neurological toxicity (which may lead, for example, to memory loss) and damages to the circulatory, reproductive and nervous systems. Lead and mercury are particularly harmful to pregnant women and babies.

Greenpeace Argentina, who have been launching responsible e-waste treatment campaigns since 2007, have publicly expressed their discontentment with the lack of commitment from the government to reach a decision on the subject. “People talk a lot about how e-waste is the ‘garbage of the future’,” Yanina Rullo, the coordinator for the e-waste campaign at Greenpeace said. “It is not the future’s garbage: it is the garbage we already have now.”

She added that she thought the bill had “real financial potential” as it could generate jobs. So why is the government taking so long to reach a decision?

“Last year was a complicated one legislatively because of the national and the city elections and the lack of development of this law was because of that. These activities took four to five months from the regular statutory dynamics.”

However, she seems to think positively about the future ahead. “This is a bill which does not have serious opposition from the manufacturers, they have an understanding that this is something that will eventually happen as it did in Europe in 2003,” she explained. “Even the National Institute for Technological Industry [INTI] has supported and has been working on this issue for a few years now, as well as other environmental organisations. This has been a problem of political structure, which hopefully will be sorted this year.”

However, another critical point is the lack of recycling technology. In Argentina there are only around a dozen qualified operators who recycle between 2-15% of the e-waste, while the rest is exported to Europe where countries like France and Germany hold the technology to deal with more complex treatment of this kind of waste. With this law, the government will have to encourage the development of new recovery and treatment technologies in the country.

Gustavo Fernández Protomastro, the director of Escrap at a waste site (Photo courtesy of Escrap)

The subject of infrastructure, however, is relevant because although the government would be made responsible for establishing annual progressive goals in terms of the amount which is processed and also creating “reception centres” (to accommodate e-waste), the way these are managed, and how they will be able to cope with a sudden flow in e-waste, has not been clarified.

One organisation that is already working in the recycling front is Escrap, which is responsible for promoting the sustainable use of electronics from production to final disposal. They collect e-waste from companies and municipalities, separate their components (glass from metals, etc) and send them to smelters. The platelets (such as motherboards and keyboards) are sent to Europe to recover raw materials so as to be reused.

The director of Escrap, Gustavo Fernández Protomastro, does not seem concerned with the current lack of infrastructure. “This (bill) is certainly going to attract local and international investment to meet the demand.”

However, he was clear about Escrap’s goals. “What we want is for the government to establish a law which will speed up recycling and not the burying of products. It is easier to send the garbage for burial than recycling but it is not sustainable,” he said. “When people bury garbage, they don’t understand that there are those who they might be hurting or killing when they do it. We cannot bury forever. In the future, a battery will be recycled, not buried.”

Unlike Rullo, Fernández Protomastro is not concerned with the amount of time the government is taking with passing the law, arguing that “in Europe this decision took almost ten years”. He believes it is more important to create a law which is simple, coherent at both local and national level and within the understanding of both consumers and producers. This is because consumers need to be aware of returning their electronics to green spots and manufactures need to be prepared to cover the costs of collecting these goods and sending them to appropriate recycling and reusing centres such as Escrap.

“But it’s all a matter of cost-effectiveness. Unless money is involved, it is hard for people to do something about it. It’s like when buying beers, for example. If I return the used bottle it is cheaper the next time I buy beer. If there was some scheme like this with electronics, it would be easier for the law to work, because voluntarily it won’t. We humans do not understand the importance of caring for the environment, but it is necessary to manage that.”

Maybe 2012 will be the year when Argentina will do just that.

To find out what locals think of the issue, click here.

Like most developing countries, Argentina is becoming more of a consumer of electronic waste, and what to do with these products when they end their natural life cycle is a growing burden. The vast majority is currently left in landfills or on rubbish dumps, taking hundreds of years to decompose and releasing heaving metals and harmful toxins, which are dangerous to public health. However, there are upcoming discussions in government to sign a law to ensure that the producers are responsible for the safe disposal of their products and to generally regulate the safe management of waste electronic equipment. The Indy hit the streets to ask the public Buenos Aires what they thought about this pertinent subject.

Cesar Benites, 38, Quilmes, works in the restaurant industry

The government should encourage people to recycle more especially as nowadays electronic items are very popular. I try and sell my electronic waste as it can make useful items. Everyone needs to play their role though and not just leave it on the street. I am aware of the dangers that the contamination of electronic waste landfills can cause and it is definitely a problem that needs to be addressed by the government.

Clara Canchi, 21, Villa Crespo, student

We just put all of our rubbish on the street as there aren’t that many options to recycle. There is a place in Villa Crespo where we take our old electronic goods and they recycle them and use the materials inside them to make other things. Maybe the government should encourage more people to recycle these things so that we are more aware.

Saravia Gianella, 35, Moreno, housewife

I am from Peru originally and it is much the same as here, we just put our rubbish onto the streets. We do try and recycle some things like clothes but I wouldn’t know where to go to recycle electronic goods. I do know that the waste is dangerous though, especially in the form of water contamination.

 
Luis Queros, 55, Palermo, chef

I do recycle old electronic goods such as computers and they go to worthwhile places such as hospitals and schools. Most people are too lazy to care though and throw out old phones and other electronic goods onto the street. I think it is terrible, people need to start to care more and instead of leaving everything in the landfill site, we should recycle things more so it is less polluting for the environment.

Jamie Eidman, 70, Palermo, works in an electronic store

Yes, of course it is such a bad thing that we don’t think and our society creates so much damaging electronic waste. Not just in Argentina but everywhere especially in US. We should put all of the electronic waste in the sea and cover it with cement, that way we would not have any contamination. I am old but this will be a big issue for young people and the government should address the issue as soon as possible.

Read it and weep, consumers! Did you know that 5,000 tonnes of rubbish goes into landfills from Buenos Aires on a daily basis? And that Ceamse, the company responsible for urban waste management (which has a monopoly over rubbish collection) charges $66 per tonne of waste.

And for those of you who missed Cecilia Cartoceti’s excellent article on the new landfill in Zavaleta, there is more bad news: Law 9111, created by the military junta in 1978, states that 21 Buenos Aires’ municipalities must “exclusively” use the landfill system to dispose of their waste, thus eradicating any hope of recycling.

But it is the national government who is responsible for dictating the minimum standards for environmental protection. These should be abided by in the length and breadth of the country, while each province reserves the right to complement those standards.

In view of that, the national government sanctioned law 25,916 in 2004 to regulate household waste.

And, in 2006, Buenos Aires sanctioned the law 1.854, the so-called ‘Ley de Basura Cero’ (Zero Waste law). It establishes a gradual reduction in the disposal of solid waste through the adoption of a set of measures aimed at the reduction in waste generation, selective separation, recovery and recycling in the city. But this would obviously mean less money for Ceamse, who make a whopping $1.5bn a year cleaning the city.

So what can you do?

• Separate your rubbish for the cartoneros or take your rubbish to a recycling plant. Visit the excellent Donde Reciclo for a list of spaces close to you. It is a myth that if you put your trash out, it will be separated at the plant. In Buenos Aires the rubbish system has totally collapsed and anything not picked up by the cartoneros (and they only manage to collect 10% of all recyclables) will go straight into a landfill – or worse, an open-air dump.
• Stop using plastic bags! They are the most ridiculous waste of time, half the time they break and they are generally a plague in the city. The vast majority end up in landfills, where they take hundreds of years to decompose. While you are at it, you can leave unnecessary packaging behind too – 40% of the rubbish in landfills is packaging!
• Use returnable bottles. There really is no excuse in Argentina – beer, softdrinks, soda… it can all be found in reusable bottles. And as for water, get yourself a filter to stop buying all that bottled water!
• Make your own compost. It is really a lot easier than it sounds and stops all that horrible methane seeping out of the landfills. If all the organic waste is removed, we resolve that greenhouse gas issue, and you have some nice ‘black gold’ (no, not that kind) for your plants. Even if you only have a balcony, you can make compost. And it’s a myth that is smells – if you get your carbon (basically ‘wet’ materials – all kitchen scraps minus animal products and oils) and nitrogen (‘dry’ materials – leaves, paper, nut shells etc) balances right, it should not smell at all. The carbon part will smell, but use two small bins and fill the larger bin regularly. Visit Compostar for ideas on composters themselves, and this useful guide for how to compost. Down the line, I will write a more in-depth guide to this!
• Buy in large packages. A shampoo of 750ml vs one of 200ml means three containers saved. And as 40% of the rubbish in landfills is packaging… well, you get my point. And yes, I realise the 750ml bottle is bigger, but it is still at least two bottles saved from the bin! Which leads me to my next point…
• Use refills whenever possible. Think mayonnaise, shampoo – there is often a ‘soft’ container refill alternative (which is also often cheaper) which saves money and hard plastic heading to the landfill. With some products, you can even go and get your container refilled – like honey. There are many places to do this!

Each week I am going to bring you a fact which will help to lay out Argentina’s big environmental issues, and also what you can do to improve the situation…

Fact #01: Wasted Water

It is calculated that each person on the planet needs between 20 and 50 litres of water per day, for drinking, food and hygiene. But in the sprawling cities of the world, around 250 litres of water is used per person, per day. This figure is high, but pales in comparison to the Buenos Aires statistic: according to Fundación Ciudad, each person uses a shocking 630 litres of water per day, more than double the average for European cities.

The reason for this huge level of water consumption can largely be blamed on three things:

• Public behaviour
• Lack of maintainance of installations
• Problems in the water network

Ok, so you probably can’t do much about the last one, but the first two leave room for improvement on a public level…

Dripping water tap (Photo: Randy Robertson)

Some ideas:

• Stop dripping taps! (a dripping tap can leak four litres per hour, which totals 35,000 litres a year)
• Fix a toilet that is leaking (it can waste 80 litres per hour)
• Don’t leave taps running uselessly: Use a plug when washing up (60 litres can be lost in the 15 minutes it takes to wash the dishes, and a plug will cost you around $2 a most ferreterias); and turn the tap off when brushing your teeth (three litres can be lost in a minute)
• Fill your washing machine before using it – each cycle uses some 100 litres of water
• Don’t use a hose to wash your car – it takes on average 500 litres of water. Go back to the old school bucket and sponge technique!
• Talk to your portero about how the pavement is cleaned – each ‘wash down’ uses an average of 250 litres of water. A new bill passed in Buenos Aires in January which will eventually limit porteros using water to clean the pavement to just three days a week – Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, with the eventual idea of phasing out the use of water altogether.

Green extreme: Speak up! Tell people off if you see them let their dogs crap on the pavements and not clean it up: if they clean up after their pooping pups, your building porter will have less of a reason to ‘wash’ the pavements down. Same goes for people who throw litter in the streets – I always find calling the cheeky yet innocent sounding ‘Señor/a, se le cayo algo‘ works quite well. Expect baffled expressions and/or angry glares in response. If you want to go further, pick up what they just dropped, chase after them and offer it back to them, along with your ‘innocent’ phrase. Public humiliation guaranteed. Public spaces belong to us and as a result we should all respect and care for them – if we all treated them like we do for our own homes, there would be no need to ‘wash’ the pavements each morning.

Let me know how it goes – and by all means share your comments and suggestions below! Or write to me at kristie@ambientateargentina.com