Recycling Around the World

You’re probably used to seeing depressing headlines about recycling, but what about the good things that are being done all around the world to make recycling a way of life...

The final stop in our Recycling Around the World Series, Zimbabwe.  Zimbabwe has always had a problem with litter, rubbish is just left by the side of the road and frequently thrown from cars, mainly because they have a lack of an effective waste management and a lack of understanding on the residents part.  

Yemen is a fairly new state, created in the 1990's it has always had trouble with conflict and instability.  Yemen has a unique challenge is waste management with only a few contractors that can recycle waste and the inherent problems with the transportation of waste over long distances with the desert environment.  

The Samoa Islands are fealing with a growing problem of junk cars and plastic bottles, they do have recycling companies in operation but they do not have the machinery to deal with large volumes especially when it comes to industrial waste.  

Waste used to be a huge problem in the country, the main method of choice for disposal for many people were open garbage pits, poor people used to go to the pits and try to salvage materials to sell.  Within a year of a waste plant opening 60 new jobs were created and 600,000 people now live in safer conditions and in more sanitary conditions.  

Coming to the business end of this series, stopping off in Ukraine, their waste management series broke down just after the Soviet Union collapsed, this rose the amount of waste generated up to 40% across the country.  There were plans in place by 2018 for plants to process 1.2 million tonnes of waste per year, these were cancelled or put on hold indefinitely.