This post is devoted to garbage problem in Kazakhstan. Garbage left in the street alongside with barbarian attitude to nature around us, our dwellings and even our lives are closely related to simple rules of upbringing. It is sometimes enough to take a brush to change a life to the better.
Larisa starts her working day early in the morning. She has been working as a loader at a state enterprise for 7 years already.
She starts cleaning the area when inhabitants of the city are still in their beds.
We get even more problems because of people’s attitude. They can throw bricks and pieces of furniture right into the dustbins instead of putting them nearby. Containers break due to heavy load as well as cars.
Others are too lazy to put trash bags inside the dustbins and leave them nearby. It’s us who have to clean the place.
It would be great if children at school were taught how to keep their yards clean. It’s not difficult at all.
It takes an hour to load one garbage-removal truck.
40 trucks a day are needed to clean the area.
They go to a dumping ground after that.
The yard-keeper named Kuralai can’t help the loaders as she is too busy with her work.
Her spot is located next to the railway station that’s why a greater amount of garbage is left here. She complains that people refuse put garbage into dustbins and leave it as it is.
She needs half a day to clean the area that will be all dirty the next day again. She doesn’t have any weekends.
Kuralai says amount of garbage is growing every day and she is going to quit the job soon.
She doesn’t have enough time for rest. The area gets dirty soon after it is cleaned.
Garbage can be collected not only near the dustbins and inside them but also next to some houses. Sergey is called Garbage King by his neighbors.
Segey ignores complaints of his neighbors and refuses to clean the territory.
He loves collecting garbage that can contain some precious exhibits.
It’s not clear what can be done to the king yet. His garbage collection will keep growing until any suitable decision is found.
Local young people organized a protest action by marching across the city streets with garbage bags on their heads showing that people who don’t care about the garbage problem have garbage instead of brains.
The guys hope that next action will be attended by more people.
Abandoned cemeteries are now also used as garbage grounds.
Prohibited waste.
Local authorities tried to separate the cemeteries from the rest part of the city surrounding them by fences but several passages were still left.
The second cemetery is surrounded by gates and not by fences.
Some graves are cleaned on the Parent’s Day. But as the cemeteries are very old many deceased don’t have any relatives any longer and their graves are left dirty.
That’s how they live being surrounded by garbage.
A civilized person will always put a bottle into a dustbin.
We need social advertising and regular volunteer clean-ups.
It’s all about upbringing. Talk about the garbage problem. Garbage will consume us if the problem is ignored.
Location: Aqtobe
via voxpopuli
Lots of garbage is a result of lots of spending in a throw-away society. These people seem to be financially well off.
Instead of walking through the streets pointlessly with garbage bags on their heads like a bunch of douches they should have collected garbage..
One of these days, those garbage pits will become the next big “mine.” People will be mining them for things like precious metals and rare earth metals.
People throw away those ear bud headphones without thinking, and they contain rare earth magnets. And, we’re probably the only society in history that has just thrown away precious metals like gold, voluntarily. (computers, electronics etc… just about all contain gold and other precious metals).
So we throw it away and bury it today, but tomorrow we will pay people to mine it for us.
Isn’t this a european thing? It seems that they are less environmentally sensitive.
I wish I was that teddy-bear.
Has there ever been a post of Soviet times with scenes like these? When people are enslaved in a system of continuous cut-throat competition for jobs, money, status, and/or material items the majority simply don’t care about their environment. Everywhere in the world capitalism rules, you will see this (including China).
All the street view photos from Soviet times were carefully censored. You couldn’t just go about willy-nilly- snapping pictures in the cities. Furthermore, the USSR had the worst environmental record of any civilization in history. The messes they made in those 70 years will take trillions of dollars and many generations to clean up.
Picky, picky. But I think he’s right. One always saw elderly women sweeping the streets early in the morning. And I knew a dude who came from communist Romania who said things were always kept clean. I see what you’re talking about (factories) but I think he was referring to neighborhood maintenance.
And as an aside, isn’t SMERSH a contradictory handle for you?
I confess…it’s a childish ploy for attention.
The last “publicity” photos are not needed. Pollution is a tragedy, not a comedy.
First we have revolution and then we stop garbage collection.
I would like to comment but Napoli isn’t that perfect either.
anyway plastic can be recycled and dump holes can be used as bio gas plants
Just wondering – How much domestic recycling goes on in the US ?
It is increasingly seen as a civic duty in large parts of Europe. Although, I’m not convinced that industry makes the most of it yet. And folk get all NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) when a bio-digestion plant is discussed. Sheesh I’d rather have bio-digestion nearby than another new nuclear reactor any day!
I’m impressed by the civic duty of the peeps that clean this particular up though
Recycling is pretty much commonplace in the US. Most homes in urban areas have recycling container pick up along with regular garbage service. Most disposable containers and all major electronics have a recycling deposit added in to the purchase price that can only be redeemed when the items are recycled. It’s been this way for bottles and cans for nearly 60 years. Fast food restaurants have been forced to stop using styrofoam and many cities have banned those plastic shopping bags.
thnx SMERSH, I thought it had to be that way too. Now all we need to do is persuade industry to make better use of this valuable resource.
That’s good those people are protesting the garbage problem. The publicity photos are a good idea. Maybe people will be inspired to stop littering. (I hope the protesters also clean up litter instead of just protesting. If they don’t, I will agree they are just douches.)
I wonder what could be, and has been done, about the litter. Are there enough public garbage cans? Do people get fined for littering? Is there any recycling program available? Is there garbage pickup service that comes to your house every week? Those things would probably help, if they don’t have theme yet. I do hope the situation improves and I believe it will.
I’m glad you’re an optimist. I’m not.
Garbage is a global problem – excellent photo essay on the issue!
Those garbage-heads shold throw those bags away with their heads in em’, will actualy do a society good.
No comment – as far I am aware it is a selected set of photographs.
We have places like this in North America and Canada. Personally, I think if there was one bad thing about the Soviet Union it was the misdirection of labour and capital to the ‘colonies’.
If capital and labour wasn’t being sucked into the black holes that were the Central Asian SSRs, maybe the housing situation in the European SSRs would have improved.
I know if Khruschev didn’t waste waste tractors in Kazakhstan (virgin campaign) and instead put them in Southern Russia and Ukraine and maybe the food situation wouldn’t have been as bad and that could have made a world of difference to the actual Proletariat.
That’s the unfortunate thing about socialism is that a lot of professional have nots are rewarded.
Wasn’t it Lenin who said “he who does not work does not eat?” – it seems like there were a lot of those in the Central Asian SSRs and Caucauses.
Capital in the Soviet Union??? LOL dude wtf are you talking abou— wait. Gah, you’re right, it’s true. Sadly -.-
Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!
Sadly, it will probably take an outbreak of dysentary or cholera or any of the other garbage or garbage-eating (rats, roaches, etc.) vectors to wake people up.
I hope I’m wrong.
Bubonic plague on the horizon?
This city is NOT called Aqtobe. It is called AKTYUBINSK.
And it’s a shame to see how the cemeteries are kept… My grand father deported there by Stalin is buried there. Fortunately, we have family in AKTYUBINSK to clean the grave monthly.
Last
After having visited Kazakhstan and seen the way they treat their own communities, even monuments to their own fallen dead in the Soviet war in Afghanistan, I can come to no other conclusion but that they are an inferior culture. This type of disregard has nothing to do with capitalism. Look downward, while flying Eastward from a country like Switzerland and you will see the sophistication of roads, villages, and all infrastructure slowly devolve into chaos. The Kazakhs have the misery they make for themselves.