ON GEOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF WASTE MANAGEMENT: TO THE RESULTS OF THE CONFERENCE "WASTE MANAGEMENT: THE TASKS OF GEOECOLOGY AND ENGINEERING GEOLOGY"

Abstract

The article deals with the geological problems of waste management, which were discussed at the Sergeev’s readings on the topic Waste management: the tasks of geoecology and engineering geology. The current unsatisfactory state of the problem of handling communal and industrial waste in Russia is analyzed. Of their total increasing volume of waste, only a small part is recycled in Russia — about 3–5%, while the bulk (up to 95%) is buried in the geological environment, causing an exacerbation of social and environmental problems. The solution of this problem is complex: political-economic, technological and geological. Meanwhile, at the present time, it is completely shifted to geologists, which is not justified. The problem of waste management is not just geological: it was done in order to save money, which should be directed to the modernization of the industry and the processing of waste (recycling), rather than to their burial and the arrangement of new landfills. The disposal of waste (especially toxic) in the geological environment should be prohibited and considered an environmental crime. The disposal in the geological environment is permissible only for non-toxic construction waste. The role of geologists (engineering geologists, ecogeologists, hydrogeologists, geochemists, geophysicists, etc.) in solving the problem of waste management should not be reduced to justifying new landfill sites (as it currently happens), but to the geological reasoning of cleaning the geological environment from pollution, elimination and reclamation of existing landfills, as well as to environmental monitoring of the state of the geological environment at waste sorting and processing points and landfill disposal sites.