Garbage in other citiesThere are garbage trucks in the neighborhood de Lesseps in Barcelona. Far from this being a problem, it''s a hell of a solution. About 30% of the Catalan capital has a collection called pneumatics. In this modern system, residents deposit their garbage bags in hatches and the material is transported by an underground pipeline to a central collection.At 5 feet from the surface, the debris of houses, offices and hospitals are sucked along 113 km of pipes at a speed of 70 km per hour.
Upon reaching the outskirts of the city, the trash is stored in containers and taken to a sorting plant, still farther from the center. Cans, paper and plastics are recycled.Meanwhile, organic produce is transformed into fuel to drive turbines that produce electricity. Other advantages of this model are cleaner streets, fragrant and silent. The pneumatic collection works in Barcelona since the 1992 Olympics. It was created to serve the Olympic Village and today serves 324,000 residents.
In Brazil, a survey by the Brazilian Association of Special Waste and Public Cleansing (Abrelpe) shows that the South is the one that best addresses the issue of street cleaning.There, according to the report, only 28% of the waste is not appropriate destination - the lowest in Brazil. In Curitiba, the selective collection serves as an example for New York: reaches 100% of the residents. It is up to separate the population of the organic dry.Clean the garbage collected can be sold for a higher price to recycling industries. "Our secret is in the awareness of people," said Jose Antonio Andreguetto, Municipal Secretary of Environment. In addition, ninety points scattered around the periphery of Curitiba, 4 pounds of recyclable material are exchanged for one pound of food. With these actions, the collection has grown 192% over the past five years. It is estimated that 23% of total waste is recycled.
BY: Mariana Barros and Manuela Nogueira - Veja São Paulo - 19/01/2011
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