Do not worry… (said the girl from the park, holding out a small recorder to my face). For a public opinion poll on packaging recycling tax, answer one question? Okay, I say yes, it shouldn’t be long, but medium at the most if possible.

It was around October of last year, and was mentioned in an interview with a student what do you think about the introduction from 1st November of a 50p charge back when glass or plastic packaging is returned to the customer! I would tell him that my opinion is equally good and bad, everything is good in theory and bad in practice, but he definitely would not understand anything but nothing, or at most that I am trying to make a bad and uncomfortable joke. Then I ask her if she wants a short and pessimistic answer or a longer and somewhat explanatory one, perhaps with some positive sentiment. The young woman is silent, confused, so I continue. Because, on the one hand, I have a bad idea, because nothing will be implemented on November 1, to improvise something like trifles, advertising, propaganda until November 1, on this date it is better to kiss the fiasco. And I also say that I will change my mind only in a few months, when the package and money return system is probably possible, that is, feasible, provided and practiced promptly and often, at least from place to place and after many errors and mistakes. Something like this was said to me, the girl still didn’t understand and thought I had no idea about the fire service and official “communications”, repeating to me in the voice of the Prime Minister or the unburied old talking robot Ion that starting from November 1 of this year…

Imagining that according to the typical sociologies that are used in public space, standard questionnaires and surveys of students, devoid of any imagination and conversational flexibility, the girl will reach her age and become a future professional debut in this field, take a lookI told him. Let’s make a bet and see you back here after November 1st, be it December or January. If “the system will already be implemented” in the most clumsy, impractical, defective way, preferably postponed until December, and then until the beginning of next year, you give me 1 lei. But if I’m wrong and it’s functional, available and available in many places (even if not everywhere), working smoothly, without stutters, misses and impossible queues, I’ll give you 10, even 20 lei.

And with such an exchange of texts (although, believe me, I like to lose realistic bets in favor of hopes, idealisms and naivety of all kinds), we see each other at work. I’m of the opinion that in theory the system is great, in practice it leaves a lot to be desired (at least I don’t regret it). There will be no shortage of technical, procedural difficulties or disruptions. The generalization of machines that issue discount vouchers will take a long time and well. For at least a year, few people will consider and pay attention to the collection of especially returnable containers, then go to polite queues and misunderstandings from place to place, the majority of the population perceives an extra 50 money per bottle as a current price increase, ignoring the hard work of collecting at home, storing and hauling searching for trinkets in local shops. Thus, as a result of the factual and psychological reality of the local residents, the shops will only collect and perhaps pour out the corresponding amounts (collected on account of bottles, blankets and cans), perhaps on their general income account, perhaps in cinenesiecece ( under) a separate score. However, they will still receive a small amount of recycled material from the population, so they will charge a much smaller fee from the buyers, the scrap collected in advance will remain with them, of course it is welcome, but ethically unjustified. Such a discount would be a kind of unjustified income or “financial lock”.

In general, I offer and promise to personally check the entire story as soon as I get it. Especially since at the beginning of November, such a machine actually appeared on my road, standing in vain at the entrance to the supermarket and starting up only to show the world in which hole to put yourself in the future package and at the slot expect a paper with a voucher or a small gift

By February 10 of this year (that is, 3 months after the inauguration of the green mini-revolution), I collected 6 such returns at home. Only 6 because the return system stamp is gradually being extended to labels, so there’s a long way to go before you’re paying extra for absolutely every single plastic household or glass container and getting cents back for returns. For now, you still collect packaging that has to be thrown in the trash, move around the city without incentive until you wave your hand, until you find a special warehouse. So, on the 10th, I also go to the aforementioned store with the little thing I specially collected. Where a smart automaton stubbornly refuses every insertion. Because it is not according to the return rule. (As if when you get a stupid/inadequate explanation, you instantly feel a lot calmer or more satisfied.) I call and a reference from the facility comes and also digs with his own hand one item at a time. He rotates it in the photo cell of the sign reader, as I did to see my graphic match sign. It’s not right… it’s not right… and neither is this! Surprise, a little half a liter of plain water, he still swallows from his hand, that’s how it is accepted. And he also gives me a voucher for 0.50 lei. Still a win considering I featured the same packaging to begin with. This is how the device issues quizzes, makes chaotic pages. I follow the man, who has somewhat triumphantly left me, and say to him: “Stand still, look ohiometrically at the marks on the bottle.” Especially since I took the package right here. Do you have a receipt? – stupidly, meaning insultingly, the man asks, because the regulations of such a special program do not provide for such a thing. But he also sees the return logo, takes my bottles and tells me to give my money right at the end. When I finish my little shopping I go back and he tells me to go to building 5. The most crowded (otherwise the only one open) so I don’t waste time and I can’t solve it faster, scan elsewhere myself and pay only by card . So I wait in line, I give the cashier a .50 receipt and tell her I still have 5 bottles, she just didn’t have any but she takes my word for it and still calls the same man with the book and maybe , with skills or functions. The man shows him where and how to enter the deduction of 2 lei 50 (the receipt will show the reduction from the total amount as if I paid it myself or received a check). I take this moment to also tell them (although they don’t really care about the poor workers who have to formally apologize to the customers, but they also don’t have the guts to care about their bosses’ complaints for consumers): this is purely a trick of the shop, a robotic device for sure poorly set up (within 2 weeks I notice it covered by another car or scaffolding, taken out of use and unplugged) and the inability to insert the procedure in the electronics of the scales and self-pay with a card, and the obligation of the husband to stand in queues in public houses, all this is aimed at discouraging anyone from returning home with recyclables.

Therefore, the technical pursuit ended in a slap, having managed to leave the cents taken in advance on the store’s account. Accounts and spoils, speaking. Psychologically, environmentally and patriotically, however, it worries and disappoints precisely those who still believe in recycling and greening as a principle. Because apart from such (precisely few) benefactors, few of the poor will come and bring material to return a trifle. For those who have the opportunity to break away from this waste that can be returned / recovered, but still prefer the convenience of garbage and composting, which makes the barons indifferent or simply ignores the calculation, especially because they risk losing time and maybe nerves, if they pass through the chain. dialogues, expectations, organizational chatter at every level of work in the system. As imposed at the moment, the act of this quiet greening requires generosity of time and sacrifice of nerves, it is a small burden for shops and citizens, and its difficult operation (also at the moment) only turns shops into toothpicks.

The sin is not from today/yesterday. This is from the day before yesterday, when in relation to the most popular markets and supermarkets, I always heard complaints about fake discounts or promotions, about the fact that a price is displayed in the store and a different one is automatically charged at the cash register, about a tiny date written on sales. the tag and the refusal heard after you paid (well the tag was valid until yesterday, the girls forgot to change it last night because it fell off another item). For the poor, who, because of such need, were forced to seek such cuts, this was an additional humiliation, many without comment, scandal or noticed this maneuver too late. On the contrary, journalists and public opinion were surprised and admired hey, those large foreign concerns quickly adapted to internal machinations, which they call us demonstrations of street banditry!..

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Sorting household waste (in manager/glass/plastic/paper bags and bins) and selective recycling of personal waste are already laws, rules and discipline that have long been imposed and officially considered “outside”. In Romania it works rarely and on a small scale, on a minimal scale, respecting/establishing itself behaviorally too little to be effective. Even where municipalities or private sewage services have designated bins or specialized waste containers, chromatically and graphically marked for each household, collection trucks dump and shred everything into one bucket and a communal tub. Even if you were kind enough to find and dispose of your trash in individual public bins, they are spaced far apart (and already full) to your dismay.

Thanks to the most hated scientists, namely psychologists, everyone knows that man has a very intimate relationship with garbage that is difficult to break. – Read the entire article on contributors.ro