Every day, and due to different actions of our daily life, we generate a large amount of garbage that goes from wasted food to clothing, and even discontinued cell phones that no longer work. Much of it goes to landfills or, even worse, illegal dumps and micro-dumps, and only a low percentage of this waste is recycled.
In fact, Chile currently generates almost 17 million tons of solid waste per year -of which 6.5 million are residential-, one of the highest rates in Latin America. In the region, meanwhile, no country exceeds 15% of recycled material, and in Chile this figure is barely around 10%.
Fighting this reality is everyone's task and it is up to each of us to contribute with a small action to live in a cleaner environment, helping to reuse what we no longer use to move towards a more sustainable and environmentally friendly economy.
In order to move in this direction, it is necessary to correctly separate each of the types of household and organic solid waste. In the case of having specific containers for each type of waste, it must be known that the color of each container determines the type of material to be deposited. Separate them correctly!:
- Organic coffee
- Yellow: Plastics
- Red: Tetra Pak
- Blue: Paper
- Orange: Oil
- Lead or Black: Cans
- Green: Glass
Along with these citizen actions, and within the framework of the Extended Producer Responsibility Law (REP), massive collection of recycled materials for mass consumption in the country will begin in September of this year. In addition, this regulation not only establishes a series of recycling goals for plastics, paper and cardboard, metals, cardboard containers and glass, but also sets a series of obligations to be fulfilled by the producers of this type of containers and packaging. Among them, the creation of infrastructure throughout Chile to receive this waste.
Another form of waste recovery is the "recycling truck": a vehicle that collects the waste that people separate at home, in the same way that conventional garbage trucks do today.
Join this great crusade for recycling and experience a friendlier environment!
