Many people take it for granted that rubbish disappears in the rubbish bin, or at least to what seems to be a distant dump, so distant that they almost forget its existence. The use of recycling bins which is considered to be their only direct environmental responsibility, more or less sums up their interaction with the concept of recycling.

The first time that I saw the actual image a large dump was two years ago, when my school's environmental team visited the central dump of Athens, in the region of "Fyli". It was a shocking experience. It was not only the smell –we never really expected waste to be aromatic-, but also the huge mountains of rubbish and some bulldozers, like small ants in front of these huge mountains of waste, trying to set an order to this mess. Thousands of birds, mostly gulls, flew all over the place, "embellishing" the place with their sound.

My research on what really happens with rubbish drove me at the Waste Management Factory at Chania, Crete, where I had the chance to observe the function of a waste management factory that will be upgraded until the end of August 2015. 

It was a really interesting experience, as I had never had the chance before to see how rubbish is actually processed. 

As it is now, the factory's limited work means that a percentage of the actual waste of the city and the area of Chania is processed, and even from what is processed, about 80% is still of no use. It was really sad to see a huge dump where the waste is thrown.
The rest 20% of the processed waste, is either compressed to aluminum or plastic (PET,PP, etc.) cubes, each of size of about 1 cubic meter.

The small, mainly organic material, is decomposed to compost, in a huge warehouse, where it is wetted and mixed for 6-7 weeks. The cubes are sold as raw material for manufacturing companies, while the compost is sold as fertilizer.

The way the factory works now is that most of the extracting process for paper, glass and plastic is done by hand, specifically by 20 workers who each collect a certain material which is moved on a belt in front of them. Not only is this not very productive, as humans cannot identify every single valuable object they see, but also seems unhealthy to work in these ambient conditions for 8 hours. 

As about the metallic objects and organic waste, they are collected automatically by the use of electromagnets and sieves accordingly.

Fortunately, at the end of next month, the factory will be upgraded, so that very small human participation, other than technical, will be needed. Also it will be able to work 24/7, as the same workers may alternate shifts, as fewer will be needed at each time, it will be much more productive (reaching up to 65% of waste to be useful), and it will take care of 8 tons per hour. This way, the dump will start disappearing from the beautiful island of Crete.

I will let you know more about that, when I actually go to observe the function of the new, upgraded factory, at the end of this month.