At this enterprise they create by breaking. Here they produce… feedstock. But it is not made of ore or oil. It is made of old cars, computers, refrigerators, washing machines, hair dryers, bread machines, TV-sets, and so on.
‘Moscomet’ Co, Ltd does waste recycling in Russia which is pretty common abroad and so rare there. The company is run by Finns and maybe that is why it is so efficient and thorough.
According to the company’s director, it is possible to create an effective waste recycling system in Russia within 3-5 years, provided the support of the government. He added, however, that his business that was so important for the country, did not receive the necessary support but vice versa.
Different kinds of waste are brought to ‘Moscomet’: from scrap metal to computers and household appliances. If the exact composition of ‘waste’ is not known, it is sorted out manually. Otherwise, it is forwarded for further separation. The company sells feedstock mostly to metallurgical works. ‘Moscomet’ has around 30 buyers. The metals are separated with the help of magnetic separation. They extract up to 78 kinds of metal. The output of commercial components may reach 90%!
They sell plastic (or granulated plastic, to be more precise). They recycle cars as well (‘cash for clunkers’ program in Moscow). Everybody can recycle his/her car which costs 3 000 rubles (100 dollars). Car accumulators cannot be recycled here, they are sent to Podolsk. They collect all fluids (oil, brake fluid) and send them for recycling to core enterprises. Unfortunately, ‘Moscomet’ does not recycle regular batteries. In Finland they recycle up to 99% of batteries because the producers of batteries pay for their recycling. In Russia they do not. ‘Moscomet’ recycles about 20-30 tons of scrap metal a month.
Just recently this pile of friges (industrial and home) and washing machines was twice as tall.
What you see here used to be cars. The one on top is ‘Moskvich’.
The loader picks up scrap metal and puts it into the grinder-press.
These are old radiators or something like that.
Waste is brought in by trucks and brought out tracked. It is weighed twice and undergoes radiation control.
These are old cans. Surprisingly, there is no great demand for them.
Sheremetyevo Airport is nearby. Old transport containers get recycled here.
‘Philips’ has sent a batch of defective light bulbs. Right in the packing.
A department of computer board recycling.
Outlet boards.
They extract aluminium. It should not go to the line.
Outlet powder.
One can find anything in a pile of scrap metal!
Bread machines and deep-fat-fryers.
Fashionable hair dryers…
… are sent for recycling.
Outlet hair dryers. That is what they look like.
A lot of old reinforcement steel has come.
Hand assembling department.
Before turning into a cube, the car is disassembled to pieces: metals, upholstery, seats, accumulators, fluids, etc.
Once they brought almost a new car for recycling. Great body, leather interior, only 55000 in mileage, but the engine did not work. The men who saw it going for recycling, were about to cry. They even took some pictures of this car with their mobile phones.
From time to time, the area is vacuumed with a magnetic vacuum cleaner.
A trash can is secured to cubes of pressed tins.
One day another author in his article about a recycling center of the same company in Finland, wrote, ‘We are not going to have anything like this in our country for a long time because this enterprise’s functions are performed by street cleaners from Tajikistan’. It is good to know that he was mistaken.
Location Moscow
via Igor Podgorny
It’s all very beautiful – what we have spent the last 50 years throwing away is, at last, being realized as a resource
Russia needs to recycle more. Recycling is big just about everywhere else. Heck, clean out all the abandoned places and recycle those materials.
That would be nice. But the same problem that led to those places being abandoned still persists. Lack of money.
Solution: tax the oligarchs, break up their operations, raise worker wages and with it the taxes they pay will rise.
Recycling is the “extreme” option ! ! ! ! ! ! !Don’t produce more junk to be recycle ! ! ! ! !
Nonsense. Recycling is the only reasonable option in the era of planned obsolescence.
You could also tax companies who design stuff that can’t be repaired or maintained, i.e. severe punishment for planned obsolence.
Very reasonable option too and already in use in many countries. Unfortunately not as a common rule, but only for some targets for now.
But having already paved the way to this era of obsolescence is exactly the problem. So much good stuff in this pics has gone to waste. No way all these Hairdryers are defective. What with the lightbulbs ? All the printed circuit boards in the container…I desolderd thousands of parts from those etc…