Interactive Round Table on Separate Waste Collection in St. Petersburg, Russia

The other day I took part in a very interesting event - an interactive round table on a separate waste collection in the city (En), that was organized by Musora.Bolshe.Net (Waste.No.More) NGO. There were representatives of the St. Petersburg city administration, waste treatment companies, hotel business, cleaning companies, NGOs, mass media and science (a humble me).

It was great that there were no presentations from the experts, etc. The main point was the direct and open discussions (of course it was moderated) about the existing issues and challenges in the field of separate waste collection and recycling and the ways to solve them.

The second part of event was a development of waste related projects in small groups. Every one took part in development 3 projects and the group members were different each time. Of course the plans itself are quite useless: what kind of plan can be developed in 15 minuets? But the shearing of knowledge and opinions with others and development of the common view at the issue helps to get new ideas. 

I was lucky to work in the same teams with representatives of the city committees. Unfortunately they are not open-minded enough and I think they do not fully understand the main economical and legislation obstacles that prevents separate waste collection or not motivated enough to overcome it. But seems that they are not hopeless.

It was very interesting to discover that many people are interested in (speaking professional language) GIS-portal dedicated to shearing information about locations of relatively small amount of recyclables, that will let waste producers and recyclers find each other for the common benefit. So if you were looking for ideas for a start-up or expanding of your GIS-business - here you are ;-) Seems that I should develop my web-GIS skills...

About communities

There is an interesting post (google-English) about organisation of the community for the Open Source project. To my mind these thoughts are useful for every volunteer based project / community - not only to those dedicated to the software development.

The main ideas (some are in my interpretation):

• The most of the community participants are passive.
• The most active participants have to be rewarded by increasing their control over the project.
• Community have to be organised and organisation have to be transparent.
• At the beginning community needs a "magnanimous dictator" to unite the community and make project attractive for participants, but for the community and project survival in the long term it is necessary to develop democracy and try to reach the state of anarchy.
• Project become more attractive when those, who are capable and willing, receive more important tasks.
• In the beginning it is hard but essential to organise a proper feedback.
• When community and project are grown and mature it is necessary to prevent its division (fork for the software) because splitting exsanguinates community and the project.
• Community have to survive its founder so it is necessary to develop the democracy and move towards to anarchy and make decisions via consensus.
• At the first stage of the democracy the "silent consensus" will prevail, and the silence will mean the agreement. Vote system have to be developed.
• With the procedures became more complicated the need in providing newbies with the rules of participation will rise.
• "Formalisation of the agreements helps to ensure that the community lives its own life and does not depend on anyone individually".
  
• "The community can survive and flourish for as long as there is demand for the product produced."

Congrats to Sea Shepherd!

Guardian reports:

Japan has temporarily suspended its annual whale hunt in the Antarctic after anti-whaling activists obstructed its fleet's mother ship.

Sea Shepherd demonstrated effectiveness of the direct action!
And there is an unusual for NGO option to help them (and another evidence of their real activity) - to make a gift from the wish list. I think helping with used things is quite environmental friendly option (of course, if you are located nearby).

Despiceble ESRI's competition

There a lot of contemptible actions around environmental issues. Infamous permission for  pollution of the Baikal lake sighed by Putin is an example. But what is your opinion on this "International Conservation Mapping Competition" organised by ESRI and the Society for Conservation GIS? They offer some money really miserable amount of money for NGO in several nominations:

$5,000 — Grand Prize
$1,000 — Best Cartography
$1,000 — Best Web Map
$1,000 — Best Use of Science
$1,000 — Best Societal Impact
$1,000 — Best Innovative Map

The main condition is: "Entries must be created using Esri GIS as a primary tool". Go ahead and ask for a prising list: there is no way you will pay less than $1,000 for the cheapest license.

Prizes of this competition do not worth a try until you already purchased a license for ESRI's software. And if some NGO purchased software from ESRI, than this NGO doesn't worth support of community, because there are plenty of free and open-source GIS software, which is even better than ESRI's, ESTI's, Intergraph's, etc. The money that NGO would spend for proprietary GIS software would find better implementation in hands of professionals who will get the job done with free and open-source GIS software! It is even cost-effective to pay for job, not for the software!

There is a trust. A trust of volunteers or sympathizer in particular NGO. Would someone donate money to NGO who spend it ineffectively? I don't even need to search for example. I  was used to donate to the Russian department of WWF. But one day I received a call from WWF and had a conversation with a young man on a subject of WWF's activity and (the main point of the conversation) the possibility of donating more... I was disappointed. The money I gave them were used to pay for the phone bills to talk to me about the money instead of  being used for nature protection. Since that conversation I do not donate WWF - they've lost my trust. It is clear that a professional (who contribute to NGO's activity) would use an open-source GIS software, not proprietary, so NGOs which finds it acceptable to pay for proprietary GIS software do not have professionals, which means they don't worth trust.

So the point of so called ESRI's competition (or grants for NGOs for ESRI's licenses) is a sales promotion and nothing else. But the sale promotion, which might be acceptable in general, is discussing when NGOs are involved. Shame on ESRI, shame on Society for Conservation GIS! If they would want to help NGOs - prizes would be at least 10 times higher and money would be granted despite software used.

musora.bolshe.net launched 500 actions to get rid of illegal dumps

Musora.bolshe.net [No.more.waste - my unofficial translation to English] is another environmental-oriented NGO in Russia. Fellows try to solve multiple waste problems like separate waste collection and illegal dumping (but not illegal landfilling - unfortunately, this fish is not for their teeth for now) in countries of the former USSR.

Guys were inspired by Estonian Let's do it project and its international offspring and decided to carry out 500 actions to get rid of illegal dumps on the 15 of May.  Hope that information about locations and composition of illegal dumps they're asking to provide is going to be reflected at the Global waste map. 

Musora.bolshe.net created a map for the scheduled actions. There are only 3 actions at the moment, hope this number will grow. You can pick up an action from this map and take part in it.

P.S. When I discovered Global waste map today there were only a couple of places with litter in St. Petersburg and whole Russia. Immediately I decided to reveal some of the "inconvenient truth" to the civilised world and upload data about large illegal landfill inside the borders of St.Petersburg  and a thematic "photo" (RGB true-color + panchrom composition from WorldVeiw-2 imagery). Seems, it is the largest illegal landfill in Europe at this map. Unfortunately I have to register (don't know if I will) before I will be able to edit composition of the illegal landfill.

40 000 m³ illegal landfill inside St. Petersburg