Спілка жінок Херсонщини

Progress is not standing still. We have learnt to produce batteries, plastic, diapers and lots of other things that made our life more comfortable, but we haven’t learnt to utilize all this after its usage. Anyway, the issue of waste segregation, treatment and utilization stays unsolved in Ukraine.

Refuse dumps are overwhelmed with things that just cannot even be thrown onto the ground, as they evolve toxicant substances, that after a while get in a human body, causing horrible diseases. We consume a lot, but don’t think about own health and what kind of the Earth we are going to leave to our children. It is high time to tell “Stop!” to ourselves and do the rethinking on environmental treatment.

For this reason, there was held IV All Ukrainian Youth Forum of Cooperation and Development, organized by “Let’s do it, Ukraine” together with the international movement “Let’s Do It! World!”, with the support from Ministry of Youth and Sports of Ukraine, in the debating chamber of Kherson Municipal Council on May 11th, 2018. The purpose of the event was to get various public interest groups of eco volunteers together into one propelling power for the sake of solvation of long-standing eco issues. Authority representatives, business, mass media and other leaders of civil and sportive organizations visited the Forum. It was felt that every guest came not “just to check the box”, but because of a profound understanding of eco issues and having the own view how to solve them.

In her opening remarks, the Regional Coordinator of “Let’s do it, Ukraine” Iuliia Tyshchenko declared the information about the planned most far-reaching in human history clean-up event on September 15th, 2018 that is going to be performed in 150 countries of the world. It is expected that 5% of the Earth’s mankind will take part in it and it will be the last clean-up.

“I strongly believe that our clean-up act of Kherson will be the last one. We will do the cleaning and won’t litter afterwards! Our goal is not to clean the city annually, but to promote the culture of cleanliness, as “It is clean where one doesn’t clean all the time, but doesn’t litter”.

Forum’s guests got to know about the preparation for the cleaning that is already going on in Kherson Region. In Ukraine the organization of this act is performed by pupils and students on the volunteer ground. Employers of profit and non-profit organizations, companies and state authorities, ordinary concerned citizens go to take part in cleaning. Every city or rural inhabitant can choose a place that he/she likes to clean and develop a miracle cleaning with own hands.

Then the floor was taken by Svitlana Andriivna Volkova, Head of Scientific Eco Council of Kherson State University. She brought up the issue of clear water in Kherson by addressing those present, “Have you pondered over the fact why water in Dnieper blossoms lately? Earlier this process started from August, now it starts from May.”

Svitlana Andriivna emphasized on the fact that the reason for this was phosphate washing materials that mankind has been using thoughtlessly. Phosphates and SAS are very dangerous as they are not rinsed out totally. Eventually, they get into a human body, blood, where they fix calcium by creating strong crystals and imprinting themselves on internal organs. The way out of this situation is to use phosphate-free washing materials.

Seaparately, Svitlana Andriivna dwelt on the issue about utilization of used batteries that start poisoning soil, water, and as a result people. Iurii Borysovych Bagnenko, who has been maintaining the net of gathering the hazardous wastes for years, shared his experience on extraction of used batteries and accumulators from litter turnover first-hand. (More information can be found at the site: http://batareiky.net/).

Iryna Zorya, Head of CO Person Development Center “Beregynia”, Coordinator of “Movement of Kherson Condominium Association Development”, stressed on the necessity of waste sorting, plastic utilization and creation of communal enterprise on its recycling. She has meaningfully touched the following issues:

1. Non from all gardener societies of our city has agreement on trash pickup, and that is why it is thrown everywhere they can, or get it burnt.
2. The city vital necessity for containers for glass and paper, valuable recyclables, which our country can export while our materials are lying thrown away in the parks and meadows.
3. Necessity to cooperate with the Authorities to solve eco issues and control their actions.

Plans and proposals for cooperation were shared by other Forum’s members. It was interesting to learn about Kherson Festival LandArt and about autumn ball of chrysanthemums that are planned for this September in our city.

Dmytro Deliev spoke about the possibility to present an own tree to a friend or a partner. Turns out, that we have an awesome example of social responsibility of Kherson businessmen from CO “Tvii Lis” (Your Forest) that have got the effective and suitable sprigging going in Kherson Region. It is worth getting acquainted personally with the initiative of Tviilis.org till it is ours, as other cities are deeply interested in it as well.

Serhii Zhyzhko (KHMIG “Kypiatok”) is organizing and performing a role play in British Debates format for the sake of formation of proper wastes behavior culture.

Speech of the journalist Ievheniia Virlych was very interesting. She made the guests look at voluntary Saturday work from a different point of view by emphasizing that they were evil deeds, as there were people who get salaries for city’s cleaning. And common urbanites should learn to stand upon their rights in a clean city and control the corresponding authorities, but not to clean the city on their own.

The Ambassador of U-Report, Illia Derevyanchenko, shared the successful experience of children and youth engagement into discussion of different problems, having suggested those present to use his knowledge for the Youth environmental polling.

Summing up, the Forum’s members expressed a wish to create a work team and jointly promote eco issues to see our city clean and blossoming.

As the Forum’s organizer Iuliia Tyshchenko stated, “It is very pleasant that so many environmentally concerned people came to the Forum. I received many propositions to cooperate. I hope that it will be effective and Eco lifestyle will become a standard for every Kherson inhabitant.”

If you want to join environmentally concerned people of Kherson and have definite proposals , please call us +38(067)719-00-40 or send an e-mail to: sweettanok@ukr.net