Landfill life. Freegans Bums in the junkyard fun life

The "garbage" scandal in the Oleninsky district of the Tver region began after it became known that a solid waste landfill would be built in the village of Olenino. Residents massively opposed such a neighborhood, despite the fact that the head of the district, Oleg Dubov, literally poured like a nightingale, praising the advantages of the new enterprise - and a chic investment project in the amount of 2 billion rubles, and live revenues to the budget of millions of so seven hundred and beyond in the same spirit .

And the fact that there are several reserves of regional importance in the region, the fact that, according to scientists, the creation of a waste burial ground will have a harmful effect on the ecology of the most important hydroelectric complex in Russia - the head of the region somehow modestly kept silent.

Moreover, when the local deputies dismissed him, and when the initiative group of residents, who began collecting signatures against the construction of the landfill, collected a hundred thousand signatures, Mr. Dubov convened a "people's council" in the regional house of culture, which at the indicated time attracted about a thousand people - It is clear that the room did not accommodate everyone.

Of course, no one conducted a live broadcast on the village square - and people asked the head to go out into the street and push his speech in front of everyone, and not in front of a few dozen lucky people who leaked inside the house of culture.

“I didn’t find myself in a garbage dump to go outside,” Dubov replied, and then people on the square began their own rally, the main goal of which was to prevent the construction of the landfill.

“It is important for us that the area will be quiet and calm, there will be no landfill, there will be no garbage dumps, and we will drink clean water from the well,” said people whom Dubov himself later called provocateurs who violate political stability and disrupted the constructive dialogue between the authorities and the population ... "A street action, regardless of its theme and slogans, is a direct challenge to the existing system of power as a whole," said Dubov, whose post on his social media page reads: "Our home is the Oleninsky district."

Perhaps the interest of the head of the district in the investment project was not only concern for the district as such - maybe there is some other interest here, which has nothing to do with the budget of the municipal district. State Unitary Enterprise "Ecotechprom" - the metropolitan giant of the waste processing industry was supposed to give a thousand hectares of land, or almost 4% of the entire territory of the Oleninsky district.

But how this Ecotechprom, which Dubov lobbied so fiercely, does its business, can be understood from information in open sources: the operation is ugly, with gross violations of the law and failure to comply with the instructions of the inspection authorities. In general, a huge corporation that is only interested in a quick turnover of money - and not what they leave behind. Their business is expanding, they need new facilities for landfills - so they laid eyes on Olenino.

They acted according to the knurled one - through the head of a poor district. They offered investments, rustled banknotes - the head and swam. It would seem that the earth is in your pocket. And the people rebelled. And he knew what he was against.

It is unlikely that the Oleninians want to breathe the same stench as the inhabitants of Orel, where the other day another fire in the solid waste landfill occurred, which rescuers extinguished all night.

At the landfill itself, according to activists, everything that is possible has been violated, there is no control of the level of radiation at the entrance, there are traces of burning garbage everywhere and numerous emissions of landfill gas, which, by the way, is not only a fire hazard, but also belongs to greenhouse gases.

The situation could be changed by a waste sorting plant built nearby, but the regional authorities are in no hurry to make this enterprise work - although from the first days of their stay in the Oryol region, the team of the governor of Potomsky threatened to restore order at the landfill for the benefit of people.

Hydra of Sobyanin's "garbage business"

As for Ecotechprom itself, the Chief scavenger of the capital, and not only it, has many faces. The organization specializing in the removal and disposal of household waste and operating solid waste landfills is known in Moscow as an enterprise controlled by the government of the capital and has launched its tentacles into other regions.

Moreover, this "hydra with seven heads", as they say, is not afraid of anything or anyone. Officially, at the level of the presidential order and the order of the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation, they closed the landfill in the Dmitrovsky district of the Moscow region, which was previously used by Ecotechprom, and they are on their side - they bring in front of everyone and dispose of 20 tons of “sanctioned” oranges.

And with this garbage outrage under the roof of the capital's mayor's office, the authorities near Moscow cannot do anything. The governor of the Moscow Region, Andrey Vorobyov, even complained to the ONF, asking him to take the situation under control.

It is not difficult to find the structures of Ecotechprom in a number of other regions of the country and even in neighboring countries. The company makes big money on garbage and landfills from Transcarpathia to Kamchatka. Moreover, as it turns out, even relatives of not the most adequate Ukrainian politicians are related to the shareholders of Ecotechprom.

It was rumored that among the founders of Ecotechprom LLC there could even be the secretary of the Ukrainian Security Council Oleksandr Turchynov, businessman Vsevolod Borodin, who is the wife of Turchynov's sister.

In general, Ecotechprom itself, headed by its CEO Alexei Kopyantsev, has a high opinion of itself. “The main direction of disposal of MSW generated in Moscow continues to be their deposition at landfills in the Moscow region” - such a phrase on the company’s website will seem solid to an ignorant person, but experts about the work of “garbage collectors” have a different opinion: “Dumpers are very rich people, one loaded garbage truck is lucky to an average of five to ten thousand rubles, and one and a half hundred of them come to the landfill a day. According to environmental legislation, solid waste landfills should be recultivated in a civilized manner, but they are simply covered with garbage in order to sort of level the soil, and they don’t bother with waterproofing and filtration, which are necessary for landfills, so they are extremely dangerous for the environment. The filtrate formed during humus MSW is not removed, polluting the soil, and the garbage itself, like peat bogs, burns for years at a depth of several meters, throwing out poisonous smoke without any filtration.”

At the same already mentioned Dmitrovsky test site, when it was operating, Ecotechprom did not disdain even dumping prohibited radioactive waste, and the test site itself spread and stank far beyond the boundaries allocated for the landfill, turning into a territory of an environmental disaster, from where people are forced to leave, where the incidence oncology and other ailments many times exceeds the all-Russian statistics.

The list of violations of the law by the company for the removal and disposal of waste from the capital is long. In addition to the facts of unauthorized operation of the officially closed Dmitrovsky test site, Ecotechprom was also noted in the scandal with the leakage of radiation from the waste incineration plant No. 2 belonging to it in the North-East Administrative District of the capital, where radioactive waste was found.

Greenpeace experts believe that the plant, launched in 1975 and operating on long-outdated technologies, produces toxic dioxins when burned, a substance whose one molecule is fatal to humans.

Lack of control, which the leaders of the State Unitary Enterprise Ecotechprom use with the connivance of the city authorities, leads to serious problems in other areas. So, it turns out that the courts of Moscow and the Moscow region are literally overwhelmed with claims of insurance companies against Ecotechprom. For the most part, these statements of claim relate to violations of the rules of the road by dump trucks of the State Unitary Enterprise, which now and then provoke accidents causing damage to property and health of citizens.

The municipal authorities of the Solnechnogorsk district of the Moscow region appealed to the State Unitary Enterprise Ekotekhprom with a demand to terminate the lease agreement for a land plot near the village of Khmetyevo, where the SUE dump trucks carry out unauthorized dumping of household waste - but not just "scavengers" to pick up now from "their" land . The Forestry Committee of the Moscow Region requires the court to collect a large fine from the State Unitary Enterprise Ecotechprom. In total, Ecotechprom is a defendant in almost two hundred civil and administrative cases.

In principle, all these lawsuits are a reason not only for fines, but also for bringing management to criminal responsibility. And even that would be. Moreover, "Ecotechprom" "multiplies" like cockroaches - no sooner had the scandalous "Dmitrovsky" closed than new dumps began to appear one after another in the surroundings, growing in breadth and height right before our eyes.

Near the village of Iksha, the landfill has been operating for a couple of years, and no one has ever seen a permit for it. But trains of garbage trucks carry waste day and night, driving the locals crazy with the rotten smell - especially in the summer heat.

Near the village of Nikolskoye on the border of the Dmitrovsky and Solnechnogorsk districts, a landfill has grown on land leased for “industrial purposes and for the construction of warehouses”, which, according to experts, brings more than 30 million rubles a month to its owners at a minimum cost.

And so - throughout the suburbs. And although a license issued by the Ministry of Ecology is required to store waste on private territory, and in the absence of such a license, the “violator” will face a fine of 100 to 250 thousand re, these are real “penny” of the “black dumpster”, in whose business one hectare brings on average one million rubles a month.

According to experts of the Ministry of Ecology of the Moscow Region, illegal landfills caused damage to the region by more than 3 billion rubles last year alone. But the struggle of officials near Moscow with the "underground workers" has not yet brought results - for one closed dump with great difficulty, there are 3-4 reappearing in other places.

Under a secure roof

The “garbage mafiosi” became so insolent that even the president of the Russian Federation had to intervene in this area: “I must confess. As for the Moscow region: I personally had to deal with some issues. It was not possible to move anything off the ground, there is a crime revolving around this, some kind of business is flourishing. It is simply impossible for citizens to solve these issues. Until the employees of the internal troops stood up at my personal command, even the local authorities could not do anything.

Surprisingly - wasn’t it easier and faster to just call Mr. Sobyanin and order him to bring down from heaven to earth the presumptuous State Unitary Enterprise Ecotechprom, which is part of the structure of the Moscow government? No, it turned out that it was easier to put a battalion of explosives under arms and set up armed checkpoints at the entrances to illegal dumps than to recruit “friend Serezha” from Tverskaya, 13.

Although, what will the mayor of the capital answer to Putin and to any other person? They say that it was not we who made the decision to build certain plants, landfills, etc. - that is, guys - this is beyond our powers.

Fun, right? Ecotechprom is under the jurisdiction of the Moscow government, and ordering this office something is beyond their powers. The principle of Ecotechprom itself is: "We don't care: whatever they give us, we will exploit." And a modest addition: “It is impossible to sort and recycle all the garbage, so the rest must be burned.”

With the impotence of local authorities, the ecological party Green Alliance is trying to fight the hydra of scavengers, demanding the resignation of scandalous garbage companies and transferring the waste problem to the authorities of the Moscow region. According to party leader Alexander Zakondyrin, the amount of garbage removed can be reduced at least four times if recycling is carried out using civilized methods, that is, building sorting stations and waste processing plants, and not burying it in the ground in the old fashioned way.

According to the “green party members”, Moscow has long ago turned the region into a huge dump, causing damage of 4.5 trillion rubles over the past 15 years. The metropolis annually produces more than 22 million tons of waste, which are removed to 200 large and more than a thousand smaller landfills, of which only 39 are legal solid waste landfills, and actually 20 are in operation, since the rest are already officially closed and do not have the right to accept waste. But they accept.

Interestingly, the Moscow government has signed contracts with "scavengers" for 100 billion rubles specifically for the processing and sorting of the capital's garbage - but the same "Ecotechprom" is not looking for difficult ways, that is, it is in no hurry to invest money in production - burning garbage is cheap and cheerful and Oh, very beneficial.

According to experts, if the waste management strategy does not change in the coming years, the Moscow Region will face a garbage collapse. “Rolling garbage into the ground is a stone age. Garbage is a valuable resource that can be recycled. The number one task is to build the waste processing industry from scratch. Task number two is to close all landfills located within the boundaries of cities in the near future, ”says Alexander Kogan, Minister of Ecology and Nature Management of the Moscow Region, explaining that the government of the Moscow Region has an understanding of how to work in this area if the regions give up the solution to this problem .

Only now "Ecotechprom" is unlikely to give up without a fight - no one wants to lose such "grandmothers" practically without cost. And the main local "scavenger" has one, but a very serious trump card up his sleeve to stay afloat and continue to shit on the Moscow region and other lands - its founder is the government of Moscow. And this is strength. Yes, and Sobyanin will not want to burn garbage right in the capital. If only to take him to some ... Olenino. It is quite possible, with the prospect of ousting the “ecotechprom” business from the Moscow region, the company is just looking for “alternate airfields” - where it has not yet been polluted ...

The oligarchs are also not averse to digging in the trash

True, State Unitary Enterprise "Ecotechprom" is not the only one in this "viper". From 2012 to 2014, the Moscow mayor's office held nine serious tenders for the right to conclude contracts for a period of 15 years for a total of 142 billion rubles, in which the Charter company snatched the biggest jackpot - 42.6 billion.

All the rest also “took” well - but that's the point. To apply for a tender, it was required to deposit a security of 1 billion rubles, and then pay 2.2 billion to the treasury in installments over the next 15 years.

But if other bidders, such as Ecoline (Gennady Timchenko and Vladimir Lavlentsov), MKM-Logistics (Roman Abramovich), Spetstrans (Sergey Chemezov) and other companies, thanks to their oligarchic owners or curators, could easily and pledge to put up in the form of a billion and after the necessary payments to make, then, as the company "Charter" with an unknown owner Alexander Tsurkan and with an authorized capital of 10 thousand rubles with the last financial indicator for 2013, where the net profit is 1.8 million rubles, and the net a loss of 9.5 million, was able not only to win the two largest lots, but also to enter the tender for state garbage contracts, where the road to mere mortals is usually strictly ordered?

Yes, apparently because there has long been a strong opinion, although not officially confirmed, that the "Charter" is controlled by businessman Igor Chaika, better known in society as the son of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation Yuri Chaika. Interestingly, many employees of the "Charter" simply heard about the "owner" Alexander Turcan that there was such a person - only a few people saw him in the eyes. And not because this is some kind of oligarch who does not like to appear in society - a fool understands that he is a dummy.

Well, when the secret became almost clear, Igor Chaika stopped "hiding his face" - there was information that his structures were acquiring the "Charter". Apparently, no one there pays money to anyone - a banal re-registration of the owner. Perhaps Turcan stopped arranging in his dummy position, perhaps Igor Chaika considered that wealth should not be embarrassed, but, nevertheless, he himself spoke about his “garbage plans” for the near future: - “Recently, the company has been an operator in Uglich. We will move further to the regions - to the Vladimir, Yaroslavl, Tula, Moscow regions and other regions ... ". It is possible that in the seething Olenino of the Tver region, which fits well under "... and other regions", not only Ecotechprom is pressing on the head of the district.

Moreover, Ecotechprom has enough work in the capital - there are just not enough landfills for garbage disposal. And the work of this company increased after the winners of the Charter, Ecolines and others tenders, which shared 142 billion government contracts with them, failed to fulfill these contracts and began to slowly leave the capital’s “garbage market” in the provinces, involuntarily turning Ecotechprom" into the capital's garbage monopoly.

But the monopoly, the lack of competition, plus the "roof" from the mayor's office - is this not a reason to consider yourself "inviolable" and "indispensable"? This means that Moscow and not only Moscow garbage was buried and burned in landfills in the immediate vicinity of people's homes, and continues to be buried and burned. The main thing is contracts, the main thing is the development of budget money, and new technologies and the preservation of the environment are something later. Ecotechprom can calmly say to itself that we are subordinate to the Moscow government. And the position of the latter is known - take out the garbage from the yards, and what you do with it next is none of our business. At least spread a thin layer all over the country. So they smear it... And the country before our eyes turns into one big dump... It's easy to pollute your native land - try to clean it up later. Here one Leninist subbotnik will not do. More than one generation of our children and grandchildren will have to deal with this. Or after us at least a flood? Or rather, one big dump.

Not far from your house - maybe a couple of tens of kilometers, or maybe much closer - there is a large-scale chemical reactor, where new portions of ingredients are loaded every day, the composition of which no one knows for sure, and the result of the operation of the reactor itself is not entirely predictable . This reactor is called a landfill, or, translated into bureaucratic language, a landfill for municipal solid waste. Everything that city dwellers throw away ends up here. Editorial N+1 I decided to find out what happens to the garbage when it ends up in a landfill.

In 2015, according to the analytical company Frost & Sullivan, 57 million tons of municipal solid waste were produced in Russia, which is only slightly less than the volume of steel production (71 million tons). In Moscow and the region, household waste (about 11 million tons per year) mainly consists of food waste (22 percent), paper and cardboard (17 percent), glass (16 percent) and plastic (13 percent), fabric, metal and wood accounts for 3 percent, and about 20 percent for everything else. In Russia, up to 94 percent of garbage ends up in landfills, only 4 percent is recycled and 2 percent is burned. For comparison: in the EU, 45 percent of waste is recycled, 28 percent ends up in landfills, and 27 percent is incinerated.

Russian landfills release 1.5 million tons of methane and 21.5 million tons of CO 2 into the atmosphere every year. In total, in Russia in 2015 there were 13.9 thousand operating landfills, of which 14 were in the Moscow region. 4 tons of carbon dioxide, 1.8 tons of ammonia and 0.028 tons of hydrogen sulfide.

Garbage landfill in section

A properly organized landfill is a complex high-tech structure. Before it is ready to receive garbage, it is necessary to prepare the bottom: lay it out with a layer of clay about a meter thick, lay a waterproof geomembrane on top, a layer of geotextile, a 30-cm layer of rubble, in which you need to lay a pipe system to collect leachate - a liquid that will be collected from debris, and there will also be a protective permeable membrane on top. The bottom of the landfill should be at least half a meter above groundwater. Next to the landfill, a pumping and treatment station will be required to pump out and neutralize the leachate, which is saturated with organic acids and other organic matter, heavy metal compounds. In addition, in the layer of garbage, when it begins to accumulate, it will be necessary to install a system of pipes for collecting and utilizing landfill gas, a station for cleaning and burning it. When the landfill is full (usually the landfill accepts garbage for 20-30 years), it is necessary to close the landfill from above with another protective layer, preserving the landfill gas collection system - it will have to work for another decades.

junkyard life

The chemical life of garbage in a landfill can be conditionally divided into four main phases. During first phase aerobic bacteria - bacteria that are able to live and develop in the presence of oxygen - break down all the long molecular chains of carbohydrates, proteins, lipids that make up organic debris, that is, mainly food waste. The main product of this process is carbon dioxide, as well as nitrogen (the amount of which gradually decreases over the life of the landfill). The first phase continues as long as there is enough oxygen left in the debris, and it can take months or even days as long as the debris is relatively fresh. The oxygen content varies greatly depending on the degree of compaction of the debris and how deep it is buried.

Second phase starts when all the oxygen in the trash has been used up. Now the main role is played by anaerobic bacteria, which convert substances created by their aerobic counterparts into acetic, formic and lactic acid, as well as into alcohols - ethyl and methyl. The landfill environment becomes very acidic. As acids mix with moisture, they release nutrients, making nitrogen and phosphorus available to a diverse community of bacteria, which in turn produce carbon dioxide and hydrogen. If the landfill is disturbed or oxygen is somehow introduced into the garbage, everything returns to the first phase.

Third phase in the life of a landfill begins with the fact that certain types of anaerobic bacteria begin to process organic acids and form acetates. This process makes the environment more neutral, which creates conditions for bacteria that produce methane. Methanogen bacteria and acid-producing bacteria form a mutually beneficial relationship: "acidic" bacteria produce substances that consume methanogens - carbon dioxide and acetates, which in large quantities are harmful to the acid-producing bacteria themselves.

Fourth phase- the longest - begins when the composition and level of gas production at the landfill becomes relatively stable. At this stage, landfill gas contains 45 to 60 percent methane (by volume), 40 to 60 percent carbon dioxide, and 2 to 9 percent other gases such as sulfur compounds. This phase can last for about 20 years, but even 50 years after the landfill stopped bringing garbage to the landfill, it continues to release gas.

Dynamics of the volume of various gases emitted by garbage depending on time

Methane and carbon dioxide are the main products of waste decomposition, but far from the only ones. Landfills have hundreds of different volatile organic compounds in their repertoire. Scientists who examined seven landfills in Britain found about 140 different substances in landfill gas, including alkanes, aromatic hydrocarbons, cycloalkanes, terpenes, alcohols and ketones, chlorine compounds, including organochlorine compounds such as chlorethylene.

What can go wrong

Marianna Kharlamova, Head of the Department of Environmental Monitoring and Forecasting at RUDN University, explains that the exact composition of landfill gas depends on many factors: the time of year, compliance with technologies during the construction and operation of the landfill, the age of the landfill, the composition of the garbage, the climatic zone, air temperature and humidity .

“If this is an operating landfill, if organic matter continues to flow, then the composition of the gas can be very different. There can be, for example, the process of methane fermentation, that is, mainly methane enters the atmosphere, then carbon dioxide, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, there can be mercaptans, sulfur-containing organic compounds, ”says Kharlamova.

The most toxic of the main components of emissions are hydrogen sulfide and methane - they are the ones that can cause poisoning in high concentrations. However, she notes, a person is able to feel hydrogen sulfide in very small concentrations, which are still very far from dangerous, so if a person smells hydrogen sulfide, this does not mean that he is immediately threatened with poisoning. In addition, when burning garbage, dioxins can be released - much more toxic substances, which, however, do not have an immediate effect.

Landfill operation technology assumes that landfill gas is collected using a degassing system, then it is cleaned of impurities and burned in flares, or used as fuel. Kharlamova notes that burning raw landfill gas, as was done, for example, at the Kuchino landfill, can create many new problems with toxic combustion products.

“In this case, for example, sulfur dioxide is formed (during the combustion of hydrogen sulfide), and other toxic sulfur compounds. With normal gas utilization, it is necessary to first clean it from sulfur compounds,” she says.

Another threat arises when a strong heating begins in the thickness of the garbage, a fire without air, similar to peat. In this case, the landfill drastically changes its repertoire, aldehydes, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, and chlorinated polyaromatics appear in large quantities in emissions. “It creates a characteristic smell. The usual smell of a landfill is the smell of decay, which is given by hydrogen sulfide and mercaptans. In the event of a fire, it starts to smell like fried potatoes - this is the smell of hydrogen fluoride, which is formed during combustion, ”explains Kharlamova.

According to her, sometimes they try to stop the entry of landfill gas into the atmosphere by covering the landfill from above with a film, and then with a layer of earth. But this creates additional problems: “During decay, voids form and soil dips occur, in addition, the film does not let water through, which means swamps will appear from above,” she says.

The main source of problems with landfills, notes Kharlamova, is food and organic waste. It is they who mainly create the conditions for the "production" of methane and hydrogen sulfide. Without food waste, garbage can be sorted and recycled much better. “If we managed to organize a waste collection system so that organic matter does not end up in landfills, this would solve most of the problems with landfills that arise today,” the scientist believes.

Sergey Kuznetsov

During the last direct line with Putin on June 15, residents of the President's Balashikha near Moscow will eliminate the landfill, which is located 20 kilometers from the Kremlin and is visible from space. Eight days later, by direct order of Putin, the work of the landfill in the Kuchino microdistrict in Balashikha was stopped, but 40 million tons of garbage did not go away. Local residents still suffer from the stench, poisonous water, dirt and disgusting view from the window. But there are those for whom a pile of garbage helps to survive and make a career.

The Village learned how people live and work in a landfill for decades, build houses from garbage and earn money for vacations in the Crimea.

Garbage landfill in Balashikha:

To the nearest house in the village of Fenino - 200 meters

The cost of reclamation is 4.5 billion rubles

Maximum height - 80 meters

Accepted up to 600 thousand tons of garbage per year from Moscow and the Moscow region

Net profit for 2015 - 2 million rubles

Total area - over 50 hectares

A quarter of all Moscow waste went here

Now at the landfill - 40 million tons of garbage

"A lot of good"

The landfill in Kuchin was opened in 1964, and for the last 50 years it has provided the inhabitants of nearby villages with work. Those who could not get a job in a workshop for tire fitting of special equipment and a marshalling station carry metal from the landfill for recycling. For the last five years, Alexander has been working as a forklift driver. His brother Mikhail - three years in truck tire fitting. The day after the landfill was closed, they were not allowed to work, and all documents, including work books, were seized. The last salary of the brothers was paid, but no compensation was given for the sudden dismissal.

A relative of Alexander and Mikhail says that they paid a decent salary at the dump, and it was not easy to get a job there: “The competition is high - all the locals wanted to go there. What a stink, what are you talking about? The smell is felt only on the first day, then you get used to it. In addition to a few houses, the brothers' property includes a car garage with a cellar, which they built entirely with materials from the landfill. Their neighbor, Uncle Misha, built a whole residential building from bricks found in a landfill.

Igor, who climbs the dump on weekends, can easily be mistaken for a homeless person or a fisherman. He asks not to be photographed with his face, because at his main job they might find out that he spends his free time in search of metal.

IGOR, LOCAL RESIDENT, ELECTRICIAN

I'm not a bum, I live perfectly in a two-room apartment in Zheleznodorozhny. The salary of an electrician is only 35 thousand, and I have two children. So I have to work here on weekends. I am looking for copper wires and handing them over for recycling. If I notice a wiring sticking out of the dump, I check it with a magnet - it shouldn’t be magnetized, I strike with a knife and look at the color: red is copper, yellow is brass. If everything fits, I drag the wire out of the ground. It's like going mushroom picking: today I didn't gather anything, but tomorrow it rained and wires came out of the ground.

I am not squeamish about working here, because I don’t go up to the very top, where there is a lot of garbage. I work on steep slopes, where homeless people cannot climb - their legs do not hold.

On average, I earn 2,500 rubles a day. Sometimes I did 10 thousand a day. For half a year of work at the landfill, I accumulated an impressive amount and sent my wife and children to rest for a month in the Crimea. My wife supports my earnings - why not, if I work all the time and don't drink?

The landfill in Balashikha appeared on the site of a clay quarry. Locals remember how they swam in quarry lakes and fished in them. Now the closest to the landfill are Rechnaya Kuchina Street and the village of Fenino, whose inhabitants see a mountain of garbage literally from their gardens.

Over the past few years, the landfill has doubled in size. It reached 80 meters in height, which is nine meters higher than the main tower of the Kremlin. Some trucks with garbage did not reach the landfill and dumped waste in random places near the village, in the forest or near the Feninsky cemetery. So the landfill gradually spread in breadth, coming close to residential buildings.

There are many animals on the landfill that feed on waste: dogs, gulls, crows, pigeons, rats and large white hares. Foxes come here at night, and bats live on the peaks.

From a distance, the landfill seems like an earthen mountain, but already a couple of kilometers away it begins to smell. Under a small layer of soil are tons of compressed garbage and compressed explosive methane gas, which is formed during the decomposition of waste. Because of it, spontaneous combustion and fires often occur in landfills. During the rains, the water erodes the soil, and the landfill slides down.

Despite the danger, some locals use this place for recreation. As a child, 17-year-old Yegor and his friends rode along the ice-filled slope of the garbage mountain on inflatable "cheesecakes". Egor says that he was "high". Another local, who did not want to identify himself, said that as a child he walked with friends in a landfill to smash found burnt out light bulbs or barrels with radioactive markers: “My friends even set them on fire - the barrels exploded and flew several meters into the air.” He says that people used to be buried in the landfill: in the 90s, corpses were brought there from Moscow and the region. The homeless from the neighborhood are buried there. “You can’t do anything with this dump - it is poisoned,” he concludes.

Oleg is 48 years old, he has lived near the landfill all his life. He got the house from his parents, he does not want to sell it, because "the place is good" - close to Moscow. According to him, before the landfill was much smaller - "flat, at ground level." Oleg signed collective letters “against the landfill”, he believes that in five years the landfill will be turned into a park. If this happens, the man is going to celebrate the victory with the neighbors.

Oleg, a resident of the village of Fenino

The dump is five years older than me. When I was in the fifth or sixth grade, my friends and I often went to pick it up. Whole bundles of unpacked imported chewing gum and blocks of chocolate were brought there. We played with gum wrappers. I remember they also found cool wine corks with a stork. And the girls were looking for used Lankom powder boxes. We were stupid: we found syringes in a landfill, and then at school we drank water from them. Of course, they hid from their parents that we were digging through the garbage.

Actually, there was a lot of good stuff. Relatives often came to us to take raw smoked sausages, balyks, whole packaged dishes from restaurants from the landfill. They went not out of poverty, but because they wanted something exquisite. Sometimes the products were expired, sometimes not - it doesn't matter. Some especially enterprising people sold products from the landfill (for example, jars of peas, corn, or the same sausage) at the market in Saltykovka (Microdistrict Balashikha. - Approx. ed.).

In addition to food, we dragged sleepers, building materials and firewood from the landfill. By the way, about ten years ago, those who were registered in the village were paid compensation for the presence of a landfill nearby - 87 rubles a month. And then it was cancelled.

Dump residents

A few hundred meters from the landfill in different places there are at least eight makeshift houses. The homeless live in them, whom the landfill provides with food, furniture and earnings. One of the houses is located right behind the fence of one of the residents of the village of Fenino - he provided them with electricity and says that "the homeless are guarding him."

The stench inside their dwelling interrupts the smell of the landfill and the grass growing around. Dozens of flies fly in two rooms, dirty things are scattered everywhere, a small TV is on. Tatyana and Khokhol have been living near the landfill since 1997. Later, Sasha moved in with them. Everything in their makeshift house used to be trash.

Tatyana is 64 years old, she rarely goes beyond the porch. Khokhol has problems with his legs, it is also difficult for him to move around. They have two main activities: drinking alcohol and watching TV. By one o'clock in the afternoon, all three are already visibly drunk. Of the TV channels, Muz-TV is most loved, of the series - the series about the "Mukhtarchik", "which looks like their dog" Donbass. In winter, they heat the shack with firewood from the landfill. They cook on gas, mainly cereals and pasta.

The largest settlement of the homeless is located near the Pekhorka River. It is hidden in the greenery, separated from two sides by a river, and from the other two - by heating pipes. The settlement has three houses, a summer kitchen, a bathhouse, a toilet and an unfinished shower. Seven dogs are tied to the buildings with iron chains, which constantly bark and attack everyone except the locals. Two more dogs everywhere follow the owner - Vyacheslav.

Vyacheslav is 51, he is from Ukraine. Two years ago, his son died on Elbrus. At the same time, Vyacheslav was fired from his job, and he moved to a wagon to a friend in a landfill. “The first time was hard. Because of bad food and water from Pekhorka, I was tormented by diarrhea alone for six months. It’s a pity for money for pills, it’s better to buy a loaf of bread instead. Vodka helps: if you drink, it seems to be easier.

Previously, ten people lived in the settlement, but after the official closure of the landfill, only three remained: Vyacheslav and Georgy with Nina. George is 56 years old, Nina is 63, they live near the landfill for more than a third of their lives. They also built all the houses. At the entrance, Vyacheslav arranged his wagon: he changed the bed, made a couch from the door and tidied up. On the shelves, he has things from the landfill mixed with purchased ones: tea, women's glasses, iodine, headphones, a Bible, empty bottles and clothes. There are kettle and pots on the stove. Candy wrappers and other small debris are scattered on the floor. The cabin smells like wood.

Vyacheslav, homeless

I work every day. I wake up at five in the morning and go to look for wires at the foot of the dump. When I collect 20 kilograms, I burn them and hand them over for processing. Burning is not difficult, but dangerous: you need to make sure that the grass does not catch fire and that you yourself do not inhale excess smoke. Last year, my friend and I earned 150 thousand rubles in a month. Every day they carried ten kilograms of copper, five kilograms of aluminum, several kilograms of brass, and so on. We wanted to buy a car with him, but it didn’t work out: he had to send money to his homeland in Tajikistan. The rest of the money melted away - for a cup, for a crackling, for cigarettes.

In addition, we did not live alone, but with neighbors. Some work, some don't - everyone needs help. Elderly people need to buy yogurt, potatoes, bread. If someone wants to hangover, then you need to buy vodka. And they drink it here a lot - almost every day. I'm screwed right now. Energy is needed to carry the wires.

Now I have nothing to save. I won’t find a job anymore: my age and appearance do not allow, and my shoulder and back hurt - I have to wear a special belt. This landfill will not last long - a maximum of a month. I'm thinking about where to go from here.

Last year, we often ate chicken with potatoes or buckwheat, almost every day we fried kebabs, which we marinated ourselves. And now we mostly eat all sorts of Roltons - in a word, homeless people. We buy groceries at Dixy or Pyaterochka. Local vendors sometimes set aside buns and other food for us. It's my birthday soon - we'll celebrate it with chips and beer.

Our settlement is ten years old - harmless people live here, we do nothing bad to anyone. In the summer we swim five or six times a day in Pekhorka. Sometimes we fish. My neighbor has a homemade fishing rod, and I have a spinning rod - I found it in a landfill and fixed it. There are fish in the river: both crucian and pike. Last year I planted dill near the house, but the dogs trampled it, and instead of the beds they made a bed for themselves.

My neighbor Nina loves to read, and that's all she does in the evenings. You should have seen her shelf, it's huge! I also sometimes read: recently I read the Bible, before the Koran - there is not much difference between them, only the words are different. And now I'm reading detective Shapilova. Until recently, I found a problem book for the Unified State Examination in mathematics, began to solve it, so the neighbors screwed it up: who goes to the toilet, who burns firewood, chik-chik, and he is gone.

I have a lot of personal things: sneakers, slates, jackets, jeans, sweaters, T-shirts. I am now in winter boots, because they have a thick sole - you won’t slip in a landfill. I wash things once a week, I also go to the bathhouse once a week, if someone melts it - more often. In the bath there is the same potbelly stove as in the houses, just lined with stones. Above is a bucket of water.

I won’t go upstairs to the dump: there’s nothing for me to do there. There aren’t really any wires there, only ferrous metal remains, and while I’m going down with weight, I’ll fall twice and completely fuck my back. 300 rubles is not worth it.

Homeless Sergey earns several times less than Vyacheslav. According to him, he has been living in a landfill since 1996. Collects ferrous and non-ferrous metals. For the sake of three hundred rubles, Sergey climbs to the very top of the landfill twice a day, from where he drags tin cans and scrap for recycling. Sergey easily talks about his life, until a short, thin woman in a hat, his wife, arrives. After her reproach: "A tongue without bones?" - they hurriedly leave with a stuffed blue bag.

SERGEY, HOMELESS

There is no fight for territory with other homeless people here. Wherever I want, I collect there. I dig my hands deep into half a meter or more. The best thing was when “Baba Nyura” came to the landfill - a car with unnecessary things of a person who had died or moved. The last time such a "Nyurka" came about two years ago: then we found Soviet cigarettes, and various kinds of food - buckwheat, pasta. Digging, digging, oops, a box of medical alcohol. They collected all sorts of good things for themselves and told the neighbors that the "Nyurka" had arrived - there was where to dig. So they found both vodka and cognac!

The landfill provides me with absolutely everything. After all, everything was brought here before: from bread to sausage. Yes, overdue for a day or two, but if it's cool, she won't have anything in a couple of days. Everything I wear is from the landfill. If it's a good thing, why not take it? It's good to live in a landfill: if I want - I dig, if I want - no. I wanted to drink - pow, and that's it, I'm having fun.

Those terrible Soviet times have long since sunk into oblivion, when people were forced to build roads, power plants, new factories, factories, kindergartens, hospitals and schools, housing ... in order to then drive millions of naive citizens into new apartments for free, forcibly sell them gratuitous vouchers from the Komsomol, the trade union committee in foreign tours, tickets for performances in the opera or theater, for concerts of famous artists.

Remember the industrial canteens of those times? Complex lunch for 50 kopecks, free bread. But I don’t remember something that would be thrown into the trash, in general, in those terrible times, bread was treated with respect, even a child knew its social significance.

Today, thousands of tons of bread and other products, removed from supermarket shelves, taken out of warehouses and taken out of apartments, end up in garbage cans and landfills in Russia every day.

Lonely homeless and unemployed citizens have become a familiar entourage of garbage dumps since the hungry nineties. Saving "bush legs" was not enough for everyone, and the biological need to chew is inherent in all bipeds. And, in fact, a person can eat anything. Some old-timers of food dumps even prefer rotten and rotten fruits to fresh fruits, claiming that they are easier to digest.

However, we are talking not only about the category of citizens (and there are 40 million of them according to official Russian statistics), in the words of the guarantor of our Constitution, “... with reduced social responsibility”, but also about new fighters for freedom, justice, against waste, overproduction of food.

These garbage-eating people call themselves freegans.

This word comes from the English free (free, free) and vegan (vegan). In general, freeganism refers to a lifestyle free from consumerism. Freegans strive to minimize the acquisition of resources, so the main source of food, clothing and other benefits of life for them are garbage containers and landfills.

The freegan movement originated and is popular in America, especially in New York, where people often meet and dig through the garbage together. The popularizer of the American movement is 28-year-old Adam Weissman, a "green" activist and creator of the website www.freegan.info. But even in our Novosibirsk, people, many of whom have both housing and work to save the world, are looking for food in trash cans and garbage dumps. What is happening?

Freeganism is a product of rich countries. It is popular in America and Europe, where expired food is distributed free of charge, put on special racks, or delivered to hospitals or orphanages.

In Russia, even having a job and a roof over your head does not save you from a half-starved life, of course, by the standards of the civilized world. After all, a mug of chifir in the morning and crackers is a normal breakfast in a country that is a huge concentration camp. I also remember the American “hippie” movement, which united under its banner quite successful and often very wealthy artists, poets, musicians, distinguished by strong personal convictions about the injustice of social rules, in the USSR it took completely different forms - imitative, but having nothing to do with real protest .

Likewise, Russian freeganism, in my opinion, is a pathetic imitation of the true movement, the usual false juggling and substitution of concepts. The Russian slave is even afraid to admit to himself his insignificance and inability to resist. He will explain even hungry fainting spells to those around him by the pernicious influence of the West, the subversive activities of foreign enemies.

In Russia, there is no system for the disposal of products from shops and public catering facilities, so they end up in closed dumps, without packaging. Most often, the owners of large stores enclose their garbage containers with a reliable fence and douse their waste with bleach.

To justify, condemned in our strange society, feeding in the garbage dumps - that's why Russian citizens who are not quite well-fed call themselves the beautiful word freegan, meaning "free". Russia…

However, many believe in this ideological tale of freegans fighting an unjust state by eating rot and rotten stuff. After all, knowing the mentality of today's traders, a slightly thinking person understands that restaurants and cafes will use and sell this rotten stuff to the last to the consumer, ingeniously masking the rotten smell and rotten taste with sauces and seasonings, and there is no doubt about their high qualification for deception, enough read news about mass poisonings in kindergartens, schools and holiday camps.

Not in favor of the "protesters" and the fact that a real protest under the banner of the opposition cannot be driven by force, and they themselves organize themselves into groups and movements for stinking feasts. Of course, for a piece of expired sausage pulled out of the teeth of a rabid rat, you will not be put away for 5-6 years according to the political ...

I called Robert and Nadezhda, two of my acquaintances, employees of various trade stores in Novosibirsk, and asked questions about the procedure for disposing of expired goods and about their attitude towards freership.

Robert:

1. We send it back to the supplier, according to the contract, or we dispose it by attracting special companies.

2. Are you talking about scourges that climb in landfills? I take it easy as inevitable...

Hope:

1..Products that are about to expire, we sell with a 50% discount, displaying them in a special display case.

2. Our store is located in a busy area, not far from Krasny Prospekt. Because of the complaints of the townspeople about the homeless, endlessly swarming in containers with waste, we now sprinkle them with bleach.

Unofficially, both interviewers added that neither store would throw out slightly spoiled or expired food, but would rather re-label with a different date. Many large stores have production shops where a rotten chicken carcass will be made into a perfectly decent-looking smoked bird, and stinky cheese will make a filling for a bun or pie.

In short, a product that is guaranteed to have general microbial contamination, groups of Escherichia coli and other decay processes, bacterial contamination, traces of the presence of rodents and insects gets into Russian containers and landfills. It seems to me that with the freedom movement, one should expect bright outbreaks of forgotten diseases, as well as unknown ones, which will appear as a result of the violent interaction of rotting waste, Russian gastric juice and the influence of an extra chromosome generously introduced into the biomaterial of the crazy Russian freeder.

I'm afraid this movement is only gaining momentum. The first days of the new year with new price tags in stores undoubtedly added those wishing to buy goods somewhere in the yard of the Siberian Giant store, climbing into a dumpster, highlighting themselves with a Chinese lantern found right there, scaring fat Russian rats that had not been frightened for a long time.

City dump
Anatoly Sukharzhevsky

Here humanity is not sorry,
Wherever you look - from all sides
The landfill breathes sour stench,
And smoke, and thousands of crows.

Crawling on the mountains of garbage
Like ants, and there, and here,
From the bird's deafening play,
Cars carry vomit.

And next to the pieces of cardboard,
From cellophane and rags
A crowd of vagabonds is the lot of the homeless,
She builds shacks for housing.

Digging in rotten waste
And, without frowning, from the hand
(I would never see this)
They eat garbage pieces.

Oh, this city dump
Far from clean squares,
You, spewing clouds of smoke,
In that ravine, in the birch forest.

You crawl, pushing against the city,
Fruiting infection and homeless people,
Like a reality that we get used to
Waving my hand at everything already.

Garbage, of course, is not a treasure, but for someone it is still a source of income. People all over the world earn their living by collecting and sorting other people's waste. Most of these sorters are women and children. According to the World Bank, about 1% of the urban population in developing countries earn their living in this way.

People engaged in such work are a kind of waste recycling in poor countries. But such working conditions cannot be called comfortable: a constant stay in a landfill is very harmful to human health.

This collection contains photographs of people who earn their living in the largest landfills in the world.

(Total 22 photos)

1. In the hope of earning a daily allowance of about $ 5, Palestinian youths wait for a garbage truck to unload a fresh batch of garbage into a landfill. Yatta village, West Bank, February 23, 2011. (Menahem Kahana - AFP/Getty Images) #

2. Indians carry bags of waste that can be recycled. Gazhipur landfill (70 acres), Delhi, India, February 18, 2010. The approximate number of scavengers in Delhi varies from 80,000 to 100,000 people. (Daniel Berehulak - AFP/Getty Images)

3. An Afghan with a tire around his neck while sorting plastic and metal items near a garbage dump, the southern outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, October 27, 2010. According to the Global Anti-Incinerator Alliance (GAIA), about 15 million people in developing countries make a living collecting garbage. (Majid Saeedi - AFP/Getty Images)

4. Indian workers sort garbage at 70 acres of Gazhipur landfill, Delhi, India, February 18, 2010. (Daniel Berehulak - AFP / Getty Images) #

5. A scavenger watches a Greenpeace activist in a hazmat suit prepare to take garbage samples from a landfill in the city of Taytay, east of Manila, on June 23, 2009. The activists took garbage samples after the closure of the landfill, which they blame for polluting the shores of Lake Laguna and nearby communities. . (Ted Aljibe - AFP/Getty Images)

6. Jardim Gramacho in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, one of the largest landfills in the world. (Google Maps - Screengrab)

7. A garbage picker shows off her manicure at the Jardim Gramacho junkyard, Brazil, December 9, 2009. (Spencer Platt - AFP/Getty Images) #

8. A child cries in his crib in a makeshift house built on a landfill, the outskirts of Baghdad, Iraq. July 28, 2003. (Graeme Robertson - AFP/Getty Images)

9. Afghans sort plastic and metal objects near a landfill, the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan. October 27, 2010. (Majid Saeedi - AFP/Getty Images)

10. A dog wanders along the road among the scattered garbage, Jardim Gramacho landfill, Brazil. December 9, 2009. (Spencer Platt - AFP/Getty Images)

11. A teenager who makes a living collecting waste, Jardim Gramacho, Brazil. December 9, 2009. (Spencer Platt - AFP/Getty Images)

12. Defective medicines dumped in a landfill, Beijing, China. March 2, 2011. (Gou Yige - AFP/Getty Images)

13. Indian workers sort garbage, selecting what can be sold for recycling, Gazhipur landfill (70 acres), East Delhi, India, February 18, 2010. This includes a wide range of materials such as paper, cardboard, plastic, metal, glass, rubber, leather, textiles and clothing, etc. (Daniel Berehulak - AFP/Getty Images)

14. A man washes after a day's work at a landfill, Lagos, April 17, 2007. Olusosan is the largest landfill in Nigeria, which receives 2,400 tons of garbage daily. An entire community lives in the dump, collecting scrap metal and selling it. (Lionel Healing - AFP/Getty Images)

15. A Pakistani boy runs through a rubbish dump in a slum in Lahore, Pakistan on December 29, 2010. (Arif Ali - AFP/Getty Images) #

16. The Mongols work, collecting and disposing of garbage, warming themselves by the fire, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. March 5, 2010. Working at the landfill involves extreme hardships, such as long hours of work outside in temperatures below 13 degrees below zero. (Paula Bronstein - AFP/Getty Images)

17. Eight-year-old brother and sister, Basir and Ratna, found a map among the trash at the Bantar Geban landfill, Jakarta, Indonesia. January 26, 2010. (Ulet Ifansasti - AFP/Getty Images)

11. 11-year-old Nang stands on a mountain of garbage, where she is going to collect plastic, Bantar Geban landfill, Jakarta, Indonesia. January 27, 2010. (Ulet Ifansasti - AFP/Getty Images)

19. People dig through the trash at a large dump in Bekasi, February 17, 2007, near Jakarta, Indonesia. Hundreds of Indonesians are risking falling ill trying to find something to sell. (Dimas Ardian - AFP/Getty Images)

20. A Palestinian youth rests in a tent camp near a landfill in the village of Yatta in the southern West Bank, on February 23, 2011. (MENAHEM KAHANA - AFP/Getty Images)

21. Indian workers communicate among themselves after working at a landfill, where they sorted recyclable materials for sale. Gazhipur landfill (70 acres), East Delhi, India. February 18, 2010. (Daniel Berehulak - AFP/Getty Images)

22. A truck owned by an American non-governmental organization dumps waste after an earthquake at an unofficial landfill, which is located near the village of Alpha, Port-au-Prince, Haiti. March 8, 2011. The landfill is a wasteland filled with garbage from the earthquake and household waste. (Allison Shelley - AFP/Getty Images)