Something that has bothered me ever since we’ve been here has been the attitudes toward conservation here. Every time I throw away a glass jar, tin can or a 1-liter foil-and-cardboard milk box, something inside of me cringes. I can’t pinpoint the time or place, but the recycling habit took hold of me a long time ago, and it doesn’t want to be broken. But there are virtually no recycling options available here, save turning in empty pop and beer bottles so they can be washed and refilled.
I understand that Ukraine is an economically struggling country, with an infrastructure permeated with corruption and a government prone to infighting. There are seemingly bigger things to worry about than whether or not average joe can recycle his plastic pop bottles. And I think the attitudes created by a communist framework die hard. Why conserve water or electricity when you pay pennies a month (or nothing at all) for unlimited amounts? Even now, most people don’t pay much for electricity or water. I think our monthly electricity bill is about $5. Most people here wash dishes by turning on the faucet and letting it run while washing each dish. Kitchen sink plugs are hard to find, and having dishwater that sits in the sink through a whole batch of dishes is just too dirty – why not constantly replace it with clean water, fresh from the tap?
Ukraine is just behind. Like so many other things here – education, technology, medicine, innovation, Ukraine seems to be about 30 years behind the modern world. In some areas, more. So hopefully it’ll be just a question of how long it takes until things catch up here. And I guess that depends on if the country can work through its current difficulties and move forward.
In the meantime, I was feeling powerless to change my lack of recycling existence in Ukraine, and I remembered a conversation that took place several years ago at an extended family holiday celebration. It was about how big of a “footprint” you make on the earth. This relates to how much carbon your existence on earth produces. Recently, I’ve been hearing a lot about it – high gas prices seem to be making being “green” cool in the U.S. So I went searching for a website to take the test. There are many, but my favorite was at www.myfootprint.org. My quiz made me feel somewhat better about my wayward recycling here in Ukraine. I took the quiz twice – once based on my Ukraine lifestyle and once based on my lifestyle in Phoenix before we came here. The results of the quiz give you a number of acres of biologically productive land (and ocean) needed to sustain your lifestyle. My results in case you’re curious: to support my current lifestyle in Ukraine, I need 8.15 acres of land. That’s very close to what an average Ukrainian uses: 8.40. In the States, even with recycling, I would need 13 acres. The average American needs 24. In the world, there are 4.5 biologically productive acres per person. From what I can tell, the biggest difference is transport. Here I always use public transport, and in Phoenix I never used it. Even though we had a fuel-efficient car, it still makes a big difference when you drive yourself. So the quiz made me feel a little better, but still frustrated that recycling in Ukraine still means using your plastic grocery bags for garbage bags, or reusing that glass jam jar as a pencil holder.
Laura
