"Heritage under threat."Â What and why pollute Baikal
To improve the ecological situation on Lake Baikal, volunteers sell the garbage collected there in an online store. The authorities, in turn, at the legislative level, propose to ban plastic bags, disposable tableware from the lake and not to use a separate category of powders. Rossiyskaya Gazeta investigated what and why Baikal pollutes.
What kills Baikal? First, ruthless tourism. There are obvious problems in the form of abandoned garbage, which, after each tourist season, volunteers take out of the lake in tons. And since last year, you can buy it, the volunteer movement "My Baikal" organized an online store that collects "goods" from the shores of Lake Baikal. And they are bought!
“For some reason, the purchase of packaging from Bounty is always the leader in our country. They directly write to us: “We want to free Baikal from“ heavenly pleasure, ”said Polina Kaiser, head of the external communications department of the Irkutsk regional environmental public organization “My Baikal”.
The main intrigue of the store is that the purchased goods will not be delivered to you, because packaging and delivery is an additional burden on the environment. So shopping in this store is a donation. If the buyer does not like such a "souvenir" from the shores of Lake Baikal, then they are invited to the cleaning, after which they can take any souvenirs for themselves.
In addition to cleaning, volunteers organize environmental education classes. Deputy Prime Minister Victoria Abramchenko instructed to develop environmental education programs for tourists and citizens living in this territory, as well as organize separate waste collection at Baikal.
According to a representative of the My Baikal Foundation, separate waste sorting has been introduced in the Olkhonsky District for two months now, and local residents have really begun to sort waste there. “In different settlements near Lake Baikal, people have different attitudes towards sorting. The old generation still remembers Soviet principles, and this is a common thing for them. Children are very good. Village children are not spoiled for attention anyway. they do something interesting, sort: caps, batteries, plastic. They run up, ask, then run home five more times to bring the garbage," Kaiser said.
They want to ban the sale of plastic bags, bags, bags, as well as disposable tableware and cutlery near Lake Baikal at the legislative level, a corresponding bill has been submitted to the State Duma. The head of the Russian Ecological Operator (REO), Denis Butsaev, said that the idea is good, but limiting the sale alone will not solve the problem. "But what can definitely change the situation for the better is the systematic construction of an infrastructure for the treatment of MSW (communal solid waste. - note" RG " )", - Butsaev noted.
Lack of infrastructure is another problem of Baikal. And we are talking not only about MSW, but also tourist facilities without treatment facilities, which are loaded all year round, says Philip Sapozhnikov, senior researcher at the Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Read More…
