Trying to recycle

November 11, 2011 - 9:58 PM by · 3 Comments
Filed under: design, Environment, General, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life 

A newspaper recycling bin

When you’re familiar with the garbage disposal and recycling systems in Europe and the U.S., it can be frustrating to encounter, and, nay, live with the very limited recycling that happens at home in Israel. True, things have improved with the recycling cages into which you can dump plastic bottles and containers of all kinds. And the newspaper and magazine recycling is also decent, with containers that are fairly plentiful in most ‘hoods. (Although I find myself schlepping bottles and newspapers fairly far distances, as there are no cages near my house, and when I called the city to complain, they told me they were not the address for such complaints. Sigh.)

A plastic recycling bin

And, when you want to recycle things beyond paper and plastic, the only address is way over in Givat Shaul, about a 20-minute drive away in good traffic, where you can recycle everything, including old electronics, cans, tinfoil, you name it. So you can imagine my excitement when the playground near us, known as the ‘hursha‘, or small forest, although it really isn’t, opened a small orange-painted corner with a sign letting us all know that we can now recycle all our recyclables — batteries, glass, paper, cans — at the hursha. Thrilling!

The hursha is also the home for one of the local community gardens, where I bring my composting, when I’m feeling organized. So we waited and waited, for the bins to arrive. Finally, a friend called the City Hall information number listed, asking why there are no bins, and how it’s all meant to be divided and collected.

She was told by the clerk who answered the phone that “it’s not the city’s responsibility.” When my friend asked Molly, the 106 person, why the sign says to call 106 for comments, Molly replied, “Not this comment.”

It seems there is an agency handling this recycling — as is for the bottles and newspapers — and we’re meant to call them, even though we have no contact information for them. Frustrating. And oh, so typical. But I will remain hopeful and optimistic that the mere presence of a recycling area means that one day, the bins will arrive and eventually, we’ll be able to recycle curbside, just like our friends in the U.S. of A.

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Mikveh water

June 21, 2011 - 4:51 AM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: design, Environment, General, Israeliness, Life, Religion 

These days, it’s all about recycling, whatever the material and wherever the venue. Even at the Pisgat Ze’ev mikveh, that’s a ritual bath, folks, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, water will soon be recycled, saving more than a million gallons of water each year.

It’s an experimental filtering and purification program that was recently approved by the Israeli Health Ministry, and will include the required changing of water at least once a day, as well as facilitating online checks of the water quality. The plan is for health ministry officials in Pisgat Ze’ev to supervise the purification process for six months before they introduce the system in other mikvehs.

If they actually succeed, 35 other mikvehs around Jerusalem will be recycling their water, saving more than 26 million gallons of water each year, as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars. Which would be ecologically meaningful, for the many women who use the mikvehs regularly to ritually bathe themselves. But it doesn’t really deal with the amount of water used by the women who have to bathe or shower before entering said mikveh. Or the mikvehs that are clean vs. those that are less so. For that, check out this link that tells travelers where to find the best mikvehs in Jerusalem, including more ancient ones.

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Recycling grows in Israel

March 26, 2010 - 10:56 AM by · 3 Comments
Filed under: Environment 

When my wife Jody and I lived in Berkeley before we moved to Israel, recycling was big business. Sorting through your trash and arranging it into categories – paper, plastic, bottles – was a daily ritual that any proper, politically correct Californian would be chastised for omitting.

Not so when we got to Israel 15 years ago. Everything went into the same rubbish bin and it all ended up in the Hiryia dump, which I’ve written about earlier. It always gave me the feeling that we were still a third world country rather than the Western economic powerhouse we positioned ourselves as.

A trip to Germany a few years ago only exacerbated my misgivings. They even had separate garbage cans in the airport, with further drilling down to distinguish between green glass and everything else.

However, recycling is on the upswing now in Israel. It began in 1999 with what are now the ubiquitous plastic bottle recycling “cages” positioned seemingly on every street corner. The program was a project of Atid Yarok, the Hamagshimim Youth Center’s green project.

Paper recycling bins are less common but we have no less than 3 of them in our neighborhood alone, divided into separate bins for regular paper and newspapers. Several years ago, the city of Jerusalem commissioned local artists to paint them with playful designs.

The country also implemented the “Deposit Law on Beverage Containers” in 2001 whereby consumers pay a 25 agorot (just under 7 cents) deposit on beverage containers between 150 milliliters and 1.5 liters. They then get the deposit back when the container is returned.

According to the Israel Ministry of Environmental Protection, recycling rates reached some 21% in 2006 (including waste from households and industry), up from only 3% in the early 1990s. The government has a target to reach a 50% rate by 2020.

There are even composting options in the country now – that’s where you set your rotting food aside to take to the local community garden and bury it along with a heaping pile of similarly stinking remains. We tried for a few months, but stopped when the stench in our house became overwhelming. I suppose we could have trucked out the garden more often.

Compost aside, recycling in Jerusalem made a big jump forward with the opening of the capital’s first central recycling center last year, where environmentally conscientious citizens can dispose of nearly all types of non-organic trash – not just plastic bottles and paper.

A number of our friends in the southern Jerusalem area have banded together to carpool to the recycling center every two weeks. Members of our informal recycling “co-op” shlep their trash to one person’s house, where it’s all packed in the car and taken across town to Givat Shaul, where the center is, just east of the central city cemetery. Last week was our turn.

The recycling center was much smaller than I imagined. There were medium-sized bins for various forms of rubbish – glass, plastic and paper of course, but also tin cans, batteries and “electronics.” In the latter were various presumably broken devices: computer printers and keyboards, telephones, toasters, even a coffee pot and a blender. I was tempted to fish out a fax machine to see if it still worked, but then thought better of it.

The center tries to make it fun for the kids. As you enter, there is a cute green frog, a green dolphin and a brown bear, all with their mouths open. Their tummies are filled exclusively with old cassettes, videotapes and floppy disks. There is also a small playground with brightly colored climbing structures for the teeniest of tots.

The staff at the recycling center are proud of their work and offer to help carry your garbage to the right receptacle. I asked what happens to the trash once it’s carted off. It goes to various recycling centers around the country, the man carrying my bag of tins explained, from north to south.

Satisfied we’d done our ecologic duty, we headed back for the car. As we left, I noticed the employee sorting through the bottles, looking for any that had a 25 agorot deposit label. Was he planning to donate the proceeds back to the center? Probably not, but I doubt anyone would complain. The very fact that this center exists is good news for Jerusalem. I actually look forward to getting my hands dirty again our next time out.

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The local Baka neighborhood administration is promoting the idea of building a second recycling depository and community garden on an empty plot of land next to our synagogue. I’m not sure if the smell wafting onto the bima during services will be entirely conducive to deep prayer, but the location is a whole lot closer and should encourage even more recycling Jerusalemites to join the jamboree.

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Recycle it

May 24, 2009 - 9:08 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Business, coexistence, Environment, General, Israeliness 

Three very different forms of recycling are going on in my neighborhood. Two have been around for ages, the other is newer, at least in these parts and they all came my way within the same day last week.

recycleI was reading several emails about the latest form of recycling to reach Jerusalem, namely, finally (!), a recycling center in the neighborhood of Givat Shaul, where Jerusalem residents can bring pretty much any recyclable material, from glass and plastic to paper and aluminum, bags and electronics. It’s run by the Jerusalem municipality sanitation department, and while it’s not exactly next door to where I live, I’m glad that they’ve opened it. Plans are to have a carpool of sorts ferrying containers of recyclables each week to the other end of the city.

As I was reading the email, some familiar sounds began drifting through the window. It was the ‘alte sachen’ man, one of several — hey, maybe one of dozens of — Arab men who walk up and down the streets, calling out, in Yiddish, “Alte sachen,” which means ‘old things.’ This is the prompt for anyone looking to get rid of old clothes, t.v. sets, furniture, you name it. No schlepping it anywhere, the alte sachen man will pick it up and schelp it for you.

That was the second form of recycling that came my way, even though I didn’t take advantage of it at the time.

And finally, during my afternoon jaunt to the park with the boys, I picked my head up from chatting with fellow mothers long enough to notice a communal garden in the far corner, accompanied by several bins of composting. Turns out my sister is one of the composters, if not one of the gardeners, and anyone from the ‘hood is more than welcome to compost and bring it on over. Then again, I could just compost for my own garden. We’ll see.

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