Russians may be legally banned from throwing household and food waste into the sewer, and sanctions can be applied to violators. The Russian Environmental Operator (REO) intends to apply to the Ministry of Construction with such an initiative. They added that in practice it is not difficult to collect information about sewer blockages with garbage: they are accumulated by the dispatching services of water utilities.
Increasingly, sewerage in residential buildings is clogged with garbage that is not intended for it, these are cotton swabs, hygiene products, bushings, food waste and much more.
For example, in Lipetsk, since the beginning of 2022, more than 8,000 blockages in the sewerage networks have been eliminated, and more than 100 tons of garbage have been removed from collectors and wells, which the townspeople threw into the toilet. In Perm, various wastes also become the causes of blockages: from household to large-sized ones. Every year, city dispatching services receive more than 5,000 complaints about clogged sewers.
“Waste that has entered the sewer is collected in large piles and blocks the way for sewage, so the pipeline is clogged. This leads to additional costs, ”the operator told Izvestia.
Therefore, the REO proposes to develop measures to reduce the proportion of waste washed down the drain, as well as to work out the issue of creating a system of fines for such blockages.
The fact is that the operator is working on a mechanism that reduces the generation of waste, plus it is developing an infrastructure for recycling and involving recyclable materials in circulation. This is called Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). Plus, the company is investing in infrastructure. Therefore, in order for waste to end up at disposal facilities, it is important to dispose of it in appropriate containers (food and non-food) for recyclable or mixed waste, and not down the drain.
Read more in the exclusive Izvestia article:
Clean labors: throwing household waste into the sewer may be prohibited by law
