Life After Life: What Happens to Our Waste When It’s Gone?

Periodically, the media addresses the issue of waste relentlessly flooding the Earth. This typically occurs when waste, instead of reaching a landfill, unexpectedly accumulates for an extended period in one of the major cities.

This occurred some time ago in Naples, and now the issue concerning the world’s largest city – Mexico City – is widely discussed.

Warsaw, which has (as some claim) the largest landfill in Europe nearby, also decided to take this step. I do not know where Warsaw’s waste travels now, but certainly not to Łubna, as it was closed about a year ago, and its successor, Łubna II, did not commence operations due to residents’ protests.

The issue of waste should be important to all of us – we should segregate it and ensure that excessive amounts do not leave our homes, for example, through sensible shopping. That is the theory.

We had the opportunity to see what the Łubna landfill looks like, its overwhelming vastness and the variety of waste stored there. We immediately said to ourselves –

this place should be a destination for school trips.

Perhaps not in summer, when the stench is unbearable, but for instance in autumn, before snow covers what arrives there from our bins, and when the temperature allows for viewing.

To conclude the waste tour, one positive fact: the gas that emanates from the waste is used to heat nearby homes.

Our next step as part of the assignment was a gigantic scrapyard in Swarzędz that literally devours entire cars – and not necessarily non-operational ones, as there are also specimens straight from the factory. Why? The reasons are varied, for example, manufacturing defects that can no longer be rectified for the car to be sold.

It must be admitted that Berta, as Alan named her, is impressive. Her metallic body, like a praying mantis,

crunches steel like crackers,

leaving behind only heaps of finely cut metal sheets.

After this demonstration of strength, we arrived at a place that would surely have pleased Goethe in the context of his last words. Mehr Licht are words perfectly suited to the factory currently belonging to Philips, where for several decades various light sources have been produced – so-called light bulbs and fluorescent lamps.

Piła is one of those fascinatingly dilapidated cities that significantly lost its prestige after the number of voivodeships was reduced from 49 to 17. We did not even have the opportunity to see the city center, as the road to Philips Lighting Poland (formerly Polam Piła) leads via a bypass. However, a sizable hotel will long remain in our memory; only two rooms were occupied, its decor resembled a forgotten mausoleum of the Polish People’s Republic, but all the central heating pipes were made of the purest copper. In any case, the promised warmth evaporated with our sleep.

The light bulb factory itself, in terms of modernity, was in no way inferior to similar ones in the West (read: in China). Our guide proved to be a man with a great knack for storytelling, and his knowledge would illuminate the darkness of the halls, even if there was no electricity.

The last stage of our tour through the western reaches was a home appliance processing plant in Wschowa. Along the way, we enjoyed a good dinner in Kalisz and a refreshing night’s sleep in the bus, followed by an adventure involving freon recovery, cable insulation grinding, and an endless horizon of snow-covered refrigerators (almost like Malevich – white on white).

This is a significant excerpt of our assignment from a year ago. Please take a look at the gallery to get a sense of our expedition’s atmosphere.