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Students from Bitola, Macedonia Conduct Waste Management Project
Our
town, Bitola, is the second largest city in Macedonia. We have food and
processing industries, a coal power plant and textile and graphic industries
nearby our city. These industries pollute the environment of the city.
The people are also polluting the environment. There are landfills but
the people are throwing garbage almost everywhere. That is why we were
very interested in doing a project about Waste Management.
We started with discussions about our work.
First we thought that it would be important to know how much garbage is
produced in our families. For that purpose we decided to measure the waste
produced in our homes during a period of one week. In the beginning of
measuring we had problems such as how to measure garbage. No one wants
to deal with it and definitely not to measure it. Also our mothers were
not thrilled with the idea of collecting waste and measuring it. We had
to find some balances and then we circulated them among us. After one
week of measuring we calculated the average amount of waste produced per
person in one day. The figure was 0.3 kg. It is a big amount because in
our everyday life we are not using ready or easy to make products. We
are buying products that are not wrapped up in small pieces. We are using
a lot of plastic shopping bags, and we are
preparing food at home, which also produces a lot of garbage.
 "Waste" By Goce Ristevski, DSEMU Gorgi Naumov, Bitola, Macedonia |
We
recorded all steps of the Waste Management project by video camera, but
the most interesting part was shooting not of measuring the garbage but
of throwing it in containers. It is an important moment for a person to
throw out his/her garbage, especially when it is recorded on home video!
We waited until late hours or woke up really early to shoot this clip,
and it was very snowy that day. It was the moment of the project work
we will probably remember the most.
In Macedonia we are not recycling waste.
We are not separating garbage in our homes and few of us are deciding
to reuse some of the garbage. That accounts for the large figure we measured
of average daily garbage produced per person. We communicated with our
peers in other countries via e-mail during this project. We exchanged
information and we found out that in developed countries the amount of
produced waste is even larger but they are recycling and reusing waste.
While surfing on the Internet, we even found that waste can produce energy,
but it looked like a dream world to us.
During our measuring period and our discussions
we came out with few interesting conclusions. First was the amount of
produced garbage. It differs during different periods of the year. For
example, the biggest amount of garbage is produced in early autumn when
are families are preparing products for the winter. Also, a significant
amount of garbage is produced before Easter in spring house cleaning.
Another conclusion is that families with babies produce large amounts
of garbage because of the diapers. Besides measuring the garbage we were
worried about garbage thrown all over our city. We were talking with some
of the authorities and some environmental organizations. They initiated
a cleaning of the litter around and inside our city. Now some places are
cleaned, but we are not sure for how long. We conducted a cleaning of
our school, but it wasn't as successful as we wanted it to be. The students
were more concerned about having fun that day then about cleaning the
school and its environment. We realized that mentality is the thing we
need to change first in order to have cleaner environment.
Group from DSEMU Gorgi Naumov,
Macedonia
Mentor: Mimoza Anastovska-Jankulovska
Mimoza Anastoska-Jankulovska
ul. Milton Manaki br. 17, 97 000 Bitola, Macedonia
tel./fax. +389-(0)97-25-25-24
e-mail: jankmj@mt.net.mk