translated from Spanish: The problem of illegal landfills: municipality withdraws 50 tons of trash monthly

The companies sector is one of the most ampl urban areas The Serena’s. Almost half of the city’s population is concentrated on the site. But there have also been generated sources of micro-garbage and illegal landfills. So many residues have accumulated, that the municipality withdraws 50 tons of garbage a month from places not enabled, said the director of the Department of Community Service of the house building, Jesús Parra.
“The old landfill of the city was in the sector,” says Alter Eco’s founder, Marcela Zavala. “It is common that the practices of disposing of bulky waste that do not have a system or use of logistical port by the municipalities, leads people to go outside the city to leave waste.”
In companies there are vacant sectors that belong to entrepreneurs. It is precisely there that micro-rubbish is generated. “These people who have vacant sites that do not keep or close them, the Municipal Works Directorate (DOM) notifies them, gives them deadlines. That is the mechanism that the law allows us to act, “Parra says to the counter.
The director of the Community service department points to the low awareness of the sector’s neighbors as a determining factor in the formation of illegal landfills. But not only the community is located, but also companies and even institutions that throw trash in the companies.
“It has surprised companies, institutions, people who expand their homes, pay them to trucks that charge cheaply, and do not worry where they are going to dump the waste.
The only way to surprise them is to have surveillance personnel, which is expensive because they have to ride in a van, a staff that is fined. ”
In La Serena not only the companies have been affected by micro rubbish. Zavala mentions that “leaving for the Elqui Valley, past Monardez, there is a sector that is always cleaning up that people are going to leave residue there.”
Civil liability
The founder of Alter Eco estimates that one of the main difficulties in avoiding the formation of micro-rubbish is “the awareness of people and the model that we have consumption of use and pull, the theme of the programmed Obsolecencia, that all products that E Stamos finding and being designed in the current economic model tend to be disposable. ”
“Then, of course, I buy a kettle, the kettle lasts me a year, a year and a half and I will. There is the culture of repairing and restoring things, which is one of the things that for us is relevant to re-energize. ”
Zavala also invites you to take advantage of municipal tools for collecting bulky waste, whose mobile is coordinated between the neighbors ‘ meetings and the municipality.
“Despite the fact that the large percentage of waste that reaches the bulky micro-waste, mattresses, things of this type, organic waste also arrives. Organic waste, there is a simple method of being reused in our houses: composting. If we consider that 50% of the waste generated by people is organic, if the efforts are aimed at solving this issue and to prevent the waste from leaving our homes we are already contributing to reduce the micro landfills, “Zavala concludes.

Original source in Spanish