Environmental

Since last week it has been discussed in press that a new party is formed in Estonia. Green party. I found it surprising because I was sure that there already is a green party because everybody has a green party. Apparently wrong.
The story, however, is not at all about the party but on quite another subject which is the adventure in trying to be more environment friendly. Already for some while in Estonia a system has been introduced to collect jars, bottles and metal cans. However, not everything can be collected, but only those packaging items which have a special mark on them. By this wine bottles, which we would have the most, are cancelled out because Estonia is not particularly popular for its wine production. Uncle Ben's jars also do not apply. There is no system for collection of foreign packaging stuff which does not have Estonian mark. Too bad. So, we are left with Estonian stuff only.
Then it turned out that plastic bottles and metal cans cannot be pressed together because the collecting machine has to be able to read the bar code to indicate the presence of the special mark. There is even an especially stupid TV-advertisement running on subject how bottles and jars have to be held fit as new. The problem is that in non-pressed shape they just take too much space, and, sorry guys, we do not have that much free space for all kind of trash so too bad, again. So, we are left with Estonian glass stuff only.
Trying to do our best we collected good bunch of glass bottles over some time and decided to get rid of it, for the first time. We went to a supermarket, which was supposed to have the machine (there are not at all many collection machines, so we specially went to this place). Firstly, we tried to find the machine ourselves. Unsuccessfully. Then we decided to ask in the information desk. The desk had a queue of around 7-8 people which did not move very fast since information desk is providing all other kinds of services like selling tickets for events, and sometimes it takes time to chose the event, date, seats, etc. Since we wanted to manage to go to cinema, which started in half an hour, we decided not to wait in the queue, but to ask the nearest shop girl. She said that machine in somewhere downstairs in parking level. We went down to parking level, looked around for some while, went to corners, found car wash, found some other stuff but no sign for bottle collecting machine. Then we decided that perhaps we should still ask the info desk, and went back to it. Luckily the queue had reduced to 3 people. The girl from the info desk said that we should go downstairs to the parking level, and there will be signs. Then I explained that we already went and found nothing. By this she reacted like I have made some personal insult or something, but still she explained that we should turn to the left, go around the corner, out from parking place, and there it will be. So we did. There was no collecting machine, only gates for goods delivery to the shopping center. As we returned to the parking place, already quite desperate with our bunch of empty bottles, in the very far corner I noticed some sign. So we went to the right, and not at all to the left, to the very far corner, which is really quite far since parking places happen to be large for shopping centers. And there it was! The sign about collecting machine (quite difficult to see from the parking place entrance door). That was, however, only the sign, not the machine itself. We found the machine still after some distance, straight, up the hill, around the corner. All this process took far more than half an hour and the movie, of course, was gone. There is no more repeated show for that movie since it's a part of festival, not a regular movie.
Conclusion is quite clear - no more collection from my side for quite a while, sorry. I find that traditional method works much better. Traditional method - get all your trash together and homeless guys will sort it out and earn some money = everybody is happier.