"Green Madrid"

[mcark]

I would like to read more about "GREEN" Madrid.....what is great about Madrid, eco friendly, recycling, alt. transportation, emissions, etc. What do you think makes Madrid so environmentally friendly (or is it all a bunch of lies).

[ValenciaSon]

I would like to read more about "GREEN" Madrid.....what is great about Madrid, eco friendly, recycling, alt. transportation, emissions, etc. What do you think makes Madrid so environmentally friendly (or is it all a bunch of lies).Here are some examples (http://katieprofunda.wordpress.com/2008/07/20/summercase-08/) of how green Madrid is. We should be that green in the US. And here (http://www.notesfrommadrid.com/2007/12/06/madrids-holiday-market-and-christmas-tree-shopping/).

[mcark]

Thanks, but I've seen these links before. I wanted to hear about the real Madrid.......when you're walking on the sidewalks, when you're really there inside the buildings etc. I'm an American living in the worst eco offender post industrialized country on the planet and I want to be jealous of other countries. I had to write a paper once on environmental policies of Great Britain, Germany, Japan, and Canada.....wow, that was fun!

[Legazpi]

I met a guy the other month who works as a refuse collector in Madrid. He says that even though the Madrileños separate the organic refuse from the inorganic, and have dedicated bins for recycling glass and carton/paper, the only stuff that actually gets recycled is the glass. The rest just gets thrown back together because it is too expensive to recycle it, especially with all the recent rises in energy costs.

I heard a similar thing from a German couple I met in Indonesia 10 years ago. They said all this separated recyclable refuse just gets dumped on a ship and taken to Indonesia where it gets dumped in a jungle.

Of course these are just anecdotes, and I don't know how true they are, however I believe there is a requirement for the recycling processes carried out in various countries to be independently monitored. It is all well and good to sign up to an agreement and say you are green, it is another to actually implement that agreement.

Regarding what Madrid is like to live in, I think it is cleaner than most cities in the UK. However clean does not necessarily mean green. About 3 years ago the air polution was terrible because there was a huge amount of building taking place. The council dug up everything in order to build 60km of tunnels and claimed there was no need to do an environmental impact survey (as required by EU law) because the 8 lane ring road they were trying to place underground was just a regular "urban street". A couple of EU greens examined it and heavily criticised the whole operation, but AFAIK no action was taken. You can read about how it affected residents in the south of Madrid here (http://www.afectadosnudosur.com/) (in Spanish)

[ValenciaSon]

I'm sure everyone of our countries have committed at least some act of green offense.

[gary]

I'm sure everyone of our countries have committed at least some act of green offense.

Yup, we pay over $10 per gallon to keep us green. :rolleyes:

[Legazpi]

I'm sure everyone of our countries have committed at least some act of green offense.

I agree. I also think that it's pretty difficult to quantify how green your actions are.

For example, in recent years in the UK there was a trend for people to buy fruit and veg locally, rather than buy stuff that has been flown half way round the world in one of those evil aeroplanes. Then somebody else points out that more energy is required to produce fruit and veg all year round in the UK, and that the carbon footprint of a heated greenhouse is greater than that of an aeroplane, so people decide to stop eating fruit and veg in winter altogether, then they catch the flu from lack of vitamin C, so they have to turn up the central heating or die, which leaves an even greater carbon footprint, etc, etc, until eventually most people decide they are fed up of the whole thing and stop taking it seriously anyway.

[gary]

The green issue only became an issue in British politics when

a) the government needed to deflect attention from the fact that they had entered into a war with a less than adequate reason to do so, in the minds ot the public.

and

b) the government spotted the gaping hole in the balance of payments that could at least be partially plugged by feigning concern for the planet and upping airport tax, fuel duty, road tax, etc.

On a global scale none of our government's efforts will make the slightest difference to the amount of emissions in the atmosphere - folk that use cars use cars and anyway our island is so small that stopping using cars altogether would have no perceptible effect.

Mount St Helens will be due to blow again... that will have an effect and of course the greatest greenhouse gas of all - water vapour - is never considered.

Heres (http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html)a point of view the UK government is not putting forward

[Pepino]

I´d be a bit miffed if I was to find out that the separation of recyclable waste that me and my flatmate do was all just being dumped with the regular waste anyway. I would hope that isn´t happening in reality though.

Also, in a quirky bit of environmental juggling this week, both the paper and the plastic recycling bins on my street have been permanently removed in order to make room for a cycle lane ;D

What Gary says about green taxes is spot on. A couple of years back, when I was last living in the UK, when petrol was, say 80p a litre, your average hardcore environmentalist would have jumped for joy at the thought of a "green tax" of 40p a litre extra in order to cut consumption drastically. Now that that has effectively happened due to crude oil prices rather than tax, has there been a drop in useage? Of course there hasn´t. Punitive green taxes just don´t work in most cases. The government cleverly puts them on life´s necessities for that exact reason. They just help to plug the many holes in the government´s finances (in the UK´s case, holes caused by Gordon Brown´s general incompetence).

[gastephen]

Yup, we pay over $10 per gallon to keep us green. :rolleyes:

That would be per Imperial gallon, and not the smaller US one.

[gary]

That would be per Imperial gallon, and not the smaller US one.

We pay over $8.50 a gallon - hope this is better for our US readers.

[ValenciaSon]

We pay over $8.50 a gallon - hope this is better for our US readers.We're close to $5/gallon in the US. For a long while you guys were paying twice as much so the gap seems to be closing.

[mcark]

five bucks a gallon! We haven't hit 4.00 yet in southern MO

[mcark]

I met a guy the other month who works as a refuse collector in Madrid. He says that even though the Madrileños separate the organic refuse from the inorganic, and have dedicated bins for recycling glass and carton/paper, the only stuff that actually gets recycled is the glass. The rest just gets thrown back together because it is too expensive to recycle it, especially with all the recent rises in energy costs.

I'm sure it is a very isolated event but I think people like to bring that up about recycling because it's an "excuse" not to recycle. Now, I do thing that people place things that cannot be recycled in the bin and those things are tossed, like bottle lids which are number 4 plastic and we don't take them here.

[richardksa]

One of my recent students was a guy from a plastics recycling company. They cannot get enough bottles! They have huge orders for recycled plastic and the company is doing well. However, they do have a huge problm with the bottle tops which, as the previous poster has said, are of a different form of plastic to the bottle and would contaminate the other. However, it seems that the guidelines from La Comunidad are to compress your empty bottle and then replace the top to keep the vacuum in. So this is a problem they have to live with.

[greytop]

That's always a problem when it comes to sorting your residues. Many packages are made up of a mix of plastics plus paper (even window envelopes). Even if you take the tops off bottles there is often a metal/plastic ring left.
I think the real answer is to get the packaging industry to sort itself out. It's not realistic to expect the public to become metallurgists or plastics technologists just to put their rubbish out correctly ;D
Since we started sorting our rubbish out (paper, plastics and glass in this part of Spain) the actual packaging now forms about 7/8 of the total - so it should reduce landfill requirements if the authorities do their bit at the receiving end.
There still seem to be collection problems. The organic residues are collected every night but often the paper/plastic containers are overflowing. This may just be a local problem, but I think it stems from the council putting it out to fixed price contract then forgetting about how it actually works until enough people complain.

[Edith]

I'm an American living in the worst eco offender post industrialized country on the planet and I want to be jealous of other countries.

But how about places like Madison, Wisconsin or Portland, Oregon? I was really impressed by the bike lanes in Madison and I met many 'green-minded' people there, like the elderly lady who used to pick up trash during wildlife excursions! Thank goodness, not every American is an eco-offender. Let's hope the greens will make it to the White House one day. :) :thumbs-up:

[Edith]

Just the other day I found a video on cicadas living in a Madrid park. These insects need green spaces to survive, so there must be some of it left in Spain's capital:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUzt0So70Gw

[Legazpi]

I recently heard cicadas for the first time near my flat in Madrid, which is also near a park. I wondered if it was anything to do with the reduced amount of building taking place.

[gastephen]

Just the other day I found a video on cicadas living in a Madrid park. These insects need green spaces to survive, so there must be some of it left in Spain's capital:

¡Interesante! Yo no habíá visto nunca uno de estos bichos.

He aquí otro vídeo en el cual se puede oír su sonido:

iK74_48w_-8

[richardksa]

We too have cicadas right outside my window in a barrio just off the M30 motorway, although in trees protected on all sides by blocks of apartments. And they are much too noisy! If this is a sign of going green, I will have to pollute. I wanna sleep!!!!!

Regarding recycling: I have spent the day with a lady who works for the refuse dept of the comunidad de Madrid. With this thread in mind I asked for info. She told me ALL glass in the greater Madrid community is recycled, Spain is the second best country in Europe for recycling paper and cardboard, but after whom she didn't know, as much plastic as they can get is sent to private recyclers and they are using the gas from landfills to generate electricity. That sounds pretty good to me, but she also said that while the people of Madrid are very good at putting their used batteries in the bins provided at nearly every bus stop, there were not enough facilities, yet, for their correct disposal, so they were being stored - and the store is getting bigger every day.

[ValenciaSon]

five bucks a gallon! We haven't hit 4.00 yet in southern MO
http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:6AdY5_7CmgLVIM:http://www.geocities.com/jqlibet/479gas.jpg Missouri has one of the slowest economies in the US so it isn't a fair represenatation.

[O_Fortuna]

Let's hope the greens will make it to the White House one day. :) :thumbs-up:

I 2nd that!

[gastephen]

Hoy vi esta postal en una tienda de artesanía galesa:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3055/2750853264_23b6071391_o.jpg