I. Metshin: “If we want to live in an eco-friendly city, we must take a big step in recycling”

In Kazan, the results of the environmental campaign “Take back the plastic and get prizes” were summed up today. The most active participants were awarded by the Mayor of Kazan Ilsur Metshin. Presently, more than 2235 children have registered in the project, all together through fandomats installed in the city's schools, they have collected more than 180 thousand plastic bottles.

At the beginning of this year, as part of a pilot project, the first 20 automatic devices for separate collection of plastic bottles and aluminum cans were installed at schools. They were transferred to Kazan educational institutions by RT-invest company (part of the Rostec state corporation). Fandomats for bottles collection will become one of the key elements of the system for separate waste collection and recycling. Kazan is one of the first cities in Russia where it is planned to create a full cycle of solid waste management.

“Today we are summing up the results of our first steps in this important endeavour. We try to pay great attention to the environment, so that citizens and children could live in a special city where there are many trees and flowers, where a healthy generation is developing, - Ilsur Metshin said, opening the award ceremony. – We do a lot for this purpose – we improve embankments, parks and squares, develop municipal economy. But all these efforts are only half of our work. If we want to live in an eco-friendly city, we must be ready for new challenges and take a big step in recycling."

According to the Mayor, 1,600 tons of waste are generated daily in Kazan, and from 550,000 to 600,000 tons per year. The area of landfills together with the sanitary protection zone is 623 hectares. “This is 2.5 times more than all our largest parks and squares. Therefore, we can't afford to continue to generate so much waste around Kazan. We have started a large and very important work on the waste separation. And we want fandomats to be placed at every school, in every supermarket, at the main intersections”, - the head of the city shared the plans.

According to I. Metshin, if children understand the importance of the problem, they will involve their friends and relatives in separate waste collection. “Children are a special front for us. Our little assistants who are sitting in the hall today are inspiring us to work with them to overcome this challenge. They are easy-going, and there are already real leaders among them, –  the Mayor of the Tatarstan capital noted. – Our success will be created by such leaders, responsible and diligent guys. And together we will make our Kazan comfortable, clean and get rid of garbage in the near future”.

During two months of fandomats’s operation, before schools were closed for quarantine, 160 thousand plastic bottles and 25 thousand aluminum cans were collected. According to the organizers of the “Take back the plastic and get prizes” campaign, two bicycles can be manufactured out of 1,700 aluminum cans, and a playground out of 4,200 plastic bottles. In total, 5 tons of clean recyclable materials suitable for further processing were removed from the fandomats installed at Kazan schools.