Disposable dishes.
Why should concern for the environment be a matter of left-right? (Photo: Reuven Castro)
These days, the decree ordering the cancellation of the tax on disposable dishes should enter into force.
There is no argument that disposable dishes are very harmful to the environment.
Apparently, the cancellation of the tax appears to be an anti-environmental move, but if we examine in depth the previous minister's decision regarding the imposition of the tax, we will discover how populist and even political it was, and far from being the good news for the plastic problems and certainly for the waste problem in Israel.
The current move is also purely political and the fulfillment of an election promise, which does not really care for the future of our children.
Instead of environmental issues being answered by agreement, they become political cluster bombs.
A tax is not the solution, and certainly cannot be an alternative to informing and changing the public's habits. The time has come to face the painful reality and say honestly that recycling, and especially plastic recycling in the world and of course also in Israel, is not achieving its purpose.
300 million tons of plastic are produced every year in the world and only about 10-15% of them end up being recycled.
In most countries there is a system of household bins.
The public separates according to types and the municipality employs an array of contractors who collect it. However, every year the countries of the United States and Europe look for "host countries" for their waste, and not just for the plastic.
Europe is still dealing with tons of cardboard packaging from previous Christmases.
Everything that they failed to recycle in their field goes with honor to a new home in the landfills of Asia.
The host countries earn a fortune for agreeing to "handle" the West's waste.
In practice, this is a mass landfill, in the worst case, many parts of it roll into the various oceans, and in the least bad case, the pollution simply stays in Asia.
Nechama Ronan, chairman of the Maman Group and former director general of the Ministry of the Environment (photo: official website, Yoni Reif)
Israel's solutions to reduce the waste problem should be in the spirit of high-tech and not in the spirit of ideologies that belong to the 70s.
It's time to build a waste incineration and energy production facility.
Hundreds of such facilities work all over the world and they do not pollute and do not emit toxins.
The energy released from the process is used to generate electricity, and the advantage is that 100% of the waste, with the exception of metals and glass, is simply treated. There is no doubt that the use of disposable utensils should also be reduced, and there is no doubt that religious families consume more such utensils, but is the tax the solution?
The solutions should be such that the entire public can be mobilized for them.
This is done through non-stop advocacy and by providing alternative solutions such as subsidizing dishwashers for families of over six people.
Our environmental problems are not the property of one political party or another.
Without a political discourse that will formulate contemporary operative agreements, our children and grandchildren will find themselves quite soon drowning in garbage.
The author is the chairman of the Maman Group and the former CEO of the Ministry of Environment
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