Problems of solid waste management for recreation zones of St Petersburg

Abstract

More than 1.5 million city dwellers spend every summer in their garden houses in the sitesaround St Petersburg. Really it is a land of the Leningrad region. Total amount of solid wastefrom them is about 72.1 thousand ton per year. It is about 20% of total amount of waste frompermanent habitants of these places. Besides 724.6 ton of waste per year is from short-termrecreants who visit forests, lakes, rivers and other places for rest. The morphological structureof solid waste from the recreants essentially differs from structure of city waste: shares ofmetals and plastics are much more.The most problem is that there is no a legal solid waste management system for recreants.One of the reasons is that recreants use territories outside places of living for permanentinhabitants. As a result numerous landfills have been appeared during last years. Dangerouscontamination of surrounded soil and water is obvious. No special control from localauthorities is existed. There is an urgent task to develop local legislation for recreant solidwaste management. Unfortunately the Leningrad region has rather aged solid wastemanagement. Practically only landfilling is used for solid waste. In the case of using onlylandfilling for recreant waste it is needed at least 4 7 ha of lands for new landfills.The most reasonable alternative is a joint solid waste management for both permanenthabitants and recreants. It will allow reducing cost of the whole system. In this case it will beeasier to attract investment for introducing the appropriate system basing on modemtechnologies. Experience of Finland when neighboring municipalities combine their resourcesfor solving this problem is the best way also for St Petersburg. In this case different methodsof waste processing can be used: compost digesting, incineration, recycling and landfilling forthe rest waste.