Baku: recycling initiatives fail to clean up city so far
The municipal company responsible for Baku’s sanitation and trash issues, Baki Abadliq Xidmeti, says that despite the installation of containers for plastic, metal, paper, glass and other types of waste, citizens have ignored this innovative concept and continue to throw away garbage at random.
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People have reacted skeptically on social media regarding garbage sorting. Several years ago, Baku residents were given the opportunity to sort garbage, but the results were not very impressive.
What the people say now
“This is certainly good, but our people do not understand such things and are unlikely to understand it in the near future. Prior to this, similar containers were set up at bus stops, and, all the same, people threw trash anywhere without reading the inscriptions on the bins,” writes one social media user.
Many believe that the city authorities need to supervise the process and fine ‘violators’:
“Until there is stricter supervision and huge fines for ALL, neither new boxes nor other innovative ideas will help.”
This method may in fact be effective: after the introduction of significant fines, pedestrians almost entirely stopped crossing the road in the wrong place in Baku – though perhaps only in the city centre. This is another reason to criticize the new containers:
“For some reason, all these new containers and bins have only been installed in the centre of the city. Nobody remembers the outskirts. If you need to throw away an empty bottle in the outskirts, you need to walk for hours to look for a bin.”
