Bureaucracy vs Trees in the European Union

The projects funded by the European Union are a major topic in countries like Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Poland and other newly accepted members in the European Union. All of them rely heavily on the funding for their development, and all of them compete with each other how much money they have acquired.

I have recently been involved in the development of several projects in Bulgaria for a medium sized enterprise. Fairly small projects. I will lead you into some details in the preparation process: the project itself was 45 pages long. There were about 25 additional pages in different kinds of declarations and about 70 pages in required documents with financials and translated company offers from suppliers. Total of more than 140 pages a single small project! And this project had to be accompanied by two identical copies. Total of 420 sheets of paper! The three fat folders were squeezed into a cartoon box, which weighted about 25 kilos! 25 kilos of white A4 paper and one cartoon – this is more than a tree! To my horror, when I delivered the project, in the waiting room there were thousands of even bigger projects than mine. Piles of wasted paper! Bigger projects (from towns and for the roads) weight from 250 kilos to 500 kilos! Just imagine the impact bureaucracy does on nature!

My project was rejected in the first stage for missing one stamp. So were 62% of the projects and more than 20% more will be rejected on the second stage. What will be done with the thousands of paper and energy spent in this nonsense? What will be done with all these papers which are rejected for stupid reasons?

I cannot believe that in the 21^st century, thousands of kilograms of paper is sent to the rubbish, instead of just investing in a software product that will accept projects electronically! I intend to write a letter of complaint to the European Commission, and whoever is in, please give me a shout!

The Garbage Patch

What you will see in the video below is striking! Over 7 million tons of plastic spanning an area twice the size of Texas. The so called "Garbage patch" in the North Pacific tropical gyre is an entire island of plastic garbage. In the waters in the area there are six time more plastic than plankton. Birds and fish are often deluded that plastic is food and poison themselves eating it. It is even more striking to think that all the plastic ever produced worldwide stays in the planet forever, because it takes thousands of years to decade and the recycling of plastic is negligible. Michael Moore, an ex-sailor, is researching this topic and there are many movies about it on YouTube. Alternatively, you can check his website, for more information.

As a conclusion, I just want to shout: REDUCE YOUR PLASTIC WASTE! Look what we've done to our planet!

Eco batteries?

Last year in Bulgaria emerged a new law for batteries' storage, which obliged all shops who sell them to have the so called "eco bins" where the customer is supposed to dispose their old batteries (picture on left). Well, I happen to know a shop where batteries are sold. The sales people there carefully collect all batteries by customers and politely explain to them what this bin is for. Everybody seems to welcome the idea and customers even bring old batteries from home and put them in the bin. BUT! There is always a BUT in Bulgaria. The eco bin is supplied by the batteries supplier, who sometimes refuses to take the full box, because for them their disposal is very expensive and they are cutting costs by simply not collecting the batteries! I am wondering who is controlling the application of the new law, and is it actually just on paper?