“Don’t Burn — Compost”: Bringing about change in a Carpathian Village
Is there a place in Ukraine free of environmental problems? Perhaps a place in the Carpathians? Kyiv resident Yanina Lucheiko thought she had found one when she moved to the Carpathian village of Verkhovyna. But it turned out that things there were not quite right there either. Read more here about the problem of waste in a mountain village, and what can be done about it there, and all over Ukraine.
“We wanted to live in the Carpathians — the capital kind of eats away at you, and at some point you find yourself cramped in there,” says Yanina Lucheiko, as she begins her story. “You feel like a hostage to the city, with its various trends and fashions. My husband and I got tired of it and decided to move to what we thought was an ecologically clean area.”
Both thought long and hard about their decision, and they spent two years getting ready for the final move. During this time, they built a house in the Carpathian village of Verkhovyna and decided to start an ecotourism business there. Yanina was sure that she was prepared for rural life and that she could cope with anything.
However, she was soon proved wrong: “We moved to the Carpathians to admire nature, but they use it here the same way as they use asphalt in the city — to drive on. We were shocked to see people dump their waste into the river.
It is a tradition here, and they say, “Everything will be gone with the water. Whatever is not gone with the water will be gone with fire. Waste burning is common here, too,” Yanina says.
Sorting instead of burning
Yanina is fond of photography, but she was ashamed of her pictures of huge waste piles in the Ukrainian Carpathians. Together with her husband and a friend, she would regularly collect trash in the woods. Finally, after two years of such housekeeping, they realized that more drastic action was needed: While you might clean it up today, tomorrow someone will leave more garbage in the forest. The procedure for waste management in Verkhovyna had evolved over many years: Dump garbage in the forest, in a river, or burn it.
People needed an alternative. So Yanina came up with the “Verkhovyna sorting waste” initiative.
Yanina’s family started the experiment in a nearby neighbourhood. They nailed up a box for glass and a wire mesh bin for plastic equipped, with signs to show people the correct container for each type of garbage. They arranged for waste on their street to be collected twice a week, and then took it themselves to the utility company.
“We tried it to gain this experience and prove to our local authorities that it all worked. People can sort (their garbage), and want to,” says Yanina.
The village council saw the results and were finally convinced that sorting could and should be implemented everywhere. Verkhovyna became the first village in the area to sort its garbage.
Moreover, Yanina set out on writing weekly articles for a local newspaper about waste burning and its health effects. Laughing, she adds that at some point she had written so many articles that they weren’t being published anymore. Then she had to look for other solutions. She created a small media outlet — a page on Facebook. It was not an easy task to involve people there because no one was used to reading about garbage. Together with like-minded people, she created posters about the risks of burning and taped them up in all busy spots — at bus stops, the bus station, the hospital, and the outpatient clinic. According to Yanina, while in the clinic “people are especially inclined to read such important information because it is about the dioxins from burning and their effect on health.” She initiated a discussion about waste with local hotels and guesthouses. By personal example, Yanina showed them how much they could save on waste charges by simply sorting their garbage. As soon as they realized that they could indeed save UAH 5,000–7,000 a month, interest in sorting rose drastically. In Verkhovyna people started talking more about garbage and decided literally to sort the problem out.
Another area of Yanina’s activity is working with children. She tries to make them aware of the harmful effects of burning garbage and encourages them to take a responsible attitude to nature. For this purpose, she created a book on environmentalism called “Save the world! It all starts with you.” She shared the idea of the book with the audience of her eco-community on Facebook and there raised funds for its publication. As a result, 4,500 copies (50 percent more than Yanina had expected) were distributed throughout Verkhovyna district and beyond. The author says that it’s easy to discuss such topics with children because they are “open, sincere and take everything well.” The reaction of adults can be more difficult to handle: “It may slightly jar their ears to hear their children talk about garbage.” Yet reactions are different. She says that after the success of her book on environmentalism, she was showered with inquiries as to whether it could be purchased elsewhere. Since the project was not-for-profit, the author posted the book online. Anyone can download it, print it, and show it to children.
Yanina was surprised whenever she received positive feedback from other regions. As it turned out, their successes were being followed on Facebook by other villages and towns across the country. Then she realized that this experience of responsible waste management could be replicated. What has worked well in Verkhovyna could be implemented in any other part of Ukraine. With this concept of sharing, and uniting people around common ideas, she founded the public organization “Green Heart of the Carpathians.”
Don’t Burn — Compost!
Yanina has repeatedly raised this topic at various fora and seminars in major cities. Yet she says she found little attention or understanding there. “City residents just don’t see it every day. And unless you can see something, it seems that it doesn’t exist,” she explains. However, April’s fires in the Chornobyl exclusion zone showed that there is indeed a problem. Yanina hopes that after them, Ukrainians will understand what problems a lighted match can lead to: “These fires should change our idea about the appropriateness of burning.”
Today, Yanina is one of the participants of the UNDP and the Centre for Innovation Development “Don’t Burn — Compost” Project. She says she was happy beyond words to learn about this initiative: “It is now possible to cover the whole country! This is a level we could not even dream of. All of Ukraine could start talking about burning garbage, and finally, stop it.”
Two hundred communities will be selected to take part in the “Don’t Burn — Compost” Challenge. The goal is to reduce the burning of stubble, fallen leaves and other organic waste to a fraction of current levels. The participating communities will receive support to prevent fires, and in the event of arson, they will be able to monitor fires in real-time using satellite data.
Yanina is happy that she will finally be able to tackle the problem together with like-minded people from other regions:
“I believe that this initiative will unite us. There is someone in every community who wants to make a difference, but they still lack support. Well, because you can’t go out alone and say to the whole of Ukraine: ‘Enough burning!’ But when there are 200 communities, and each says they are against the smoke and fire, it will have an effect.”
Yanina wants all Ukrainians to be concerned about these issues, rather than leaving them to so-called “activists.” That’s why every time someone calls her an activist, she corrects them: “It’s a label that dissociates you from society. We’re not activists. What we’re doing isn’t pushing any boundaries. It’s just right to take care of nature and think about the future.”
UNDP’s Accelerator Lab in Ukraine together with the Innovation Development Center launched the “Don’t Burn — Compost” project challenge to study successful experiences in preventing the burning of organic waste, promote waste composting as an alternative to burning, and enable citizens to get real-time information on fires in ecosystems based on satellite data and data collected by project participants.
UNDP in Ukraine has been working with a variety of actors helping the country to mitigate and adapt to the impact of the changing climate, improve public policy process in the field of environment and sustainable energy, restore degraded lands and help communities gain access to cleaner, modern forms of energy as part of broader efforts to accelerate progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and scale up climate action.
This story is a part of a communication campaign about environmental changemakers, which became possible thanks to the UNDP project “Support to the Parliament of Ukraine on sustainable energy and environment” with the financial support of Sweden and UNDP project “Plastic Waste Management at the local level” with the financial support of the joint New World Programme of the Coca-Cola Foundation and Global Water Challenge.
Author: Yulia Hudoshnyk for UNDP Ukraine, editing by Viktoriya Yashkina, UNDP.
Photo courtesy: Yanina Lucheiko
