The life-style of humans changed a lot in the second half of the 20^th century. However also a lot of questions have occurred in connection with welfare societies. The giant increase in producing trash is also among these problems. This phenomenon has become critical first of all because the cities are not able to handle the dirt and trash produced by themselves. The situation became even more serious when hazardous wastes appeared in huge quantities. The developments of the last decade in the fields of electronics and information technology have produced e-trash in extreme quantities.

The solving of this problem is possible through two major ways. The first one involves the minimizing of the produced trash. Huge efforts must be made in order to decrease the created trash, because – no matter how well the trash is handled or how efficient the recycling system is –, the forming of trash wastes resources and comes with environmental pollution. Neither the recycling of trash, nor making hazardous trash harmless in an environmentally protective way can replace prevention.

The other possible way is the use of trash as a raw material, which is called recycling. Recycling stands for the environmentally conscious cycle of materials, in the raw material – products – wastes – raw material etc. process.

Each and every citizen must play a role in solving the problem of the huge quantities of trash. The following should be known about the recycling of household trash:

Paper

The production of paper is one of the most polluting and harmful processes. A lot of water, energy and chemicals are needed in order to make wood-fiber into cellulose. The quickly growing soft-wood plantations exploit the soil and need a lot of chemical fertilizers and other synthetic materials.

The industrial sector uses more than 2.000 chemicals during the production of paper, and the presses use an extra 1.000. Every ton of raw newspaper contains 70 kg of chemicals. We Hungarians “consume” 55 kg of paper per capita every year.

The environmentally friendly “re-paper”, the grey paper is created through the simple pulping of the collected paper wastes. 90 % of the used water is circulated during this process. The final color of the paper is typically greyish caused by the remaining coloring materials which can not be dissolved in water, but this product can still be used for limited purposes.

Glass wastes

Glass does not decompose in nature. It is only environmentally friendly if it’s recycled in the producing process. An average bottle can be re-filled 45-60 times, and even considering cleaning and choosing, 80 % of the energy can be saved this way. 20-30 % can also be saved through re-melting.

Glass wastes which can be recycled

Metal wastes

When making 1 ton of alum earth for the production of aluminium, at least 1 ton of red slime is also produced, which is responsible for 56 % of the Hungarian hazardous wastes.

Metal wastes which can be recycled

Plastic

The average use of plastic has extremely expanded in the last few years. Most of the plastic will stay in warehouses for hundreds of years. Plastic is full of dangerous materials, which are released during the slow decomposition.

Plastic which can be recycled

The European Union is now supporting the recycling of wastes more than ever. The increase of the produced wastes’ quantity has to be stopped until 2012 and it has to start decreasing from 2020.

Recycling of wastes in Hungary is only at a beginning stage now. The experiences show that similar to the other fields of sustainable development, the changing of people’s approach and attitude is the most difficult here as well. Körös-Maros Regional Development and Organic Farming Foundation would like to participate in this work.