More than 200,000 tonnes of second-hand and condemned electronic goods arrive in Ghana, West Africa, every year. The director films the everyday routine of the communities trudging through post-apocalyptic landscapes to grasp the problem's scale. To introduce the issue in the Ukrainian context, the moderator of the event, a lecturer at the department of theory and practice of translation Natalia Pasichnyk, invited an expert, chairman of the NGO Green World, Oleksandr Stepanenko.
"The problem of consumption waste management is extremely acute for Ternopil. Unfortunately, not much is written and said about it. However, the problem is no less acute than the Lviv tragedy at the Hrybovytsia landfill, which got a lot of publicity. The only landfill in the city is located in the sanitary zone, designed for a drainage basin. The city receives 80 percent of drinking water from it. Exporting wastes with a possible toxic effect close to a sole source of municipal water supply is not the norm," adds chairman of the NGO Green World.
Oleksandr Stepanenko is also the head of the environmental Film Club on Green Street and has collaborated with the university audience, in particular during the Docudays UA Travelling Festival. The NGO Green World sees its mission in intensifying discussions on topical environmental issues among educated youth. Although the landfill situation has been discussed with local authorities for several years in a row, no specific steps have been taken to resolve it. Publicity is also one of the tools to influence local governments and motivate management to take action.
"I liked the script written by Natalia Pasichnyk because it envisages an attempt to harmoniously address ideological issues. In my opinion, humankind's economy should move from a linear "buy-consume-throw-forget" model to a closed-loop model, where products and materials pass from one form to another, keeping recourse value," said Stepanenko.
During the discussion, the moderator applied the role-play method developed in the scenario. Participants were invited to imagine themselves as potential actors in the environmental chain: CEO of an electronics manufacturing company, authority representative importer of waste, authority representative exporter of waste, city hall, and school administration. Trying on these roles, the audience worked on solving the problem of household waste disposal. After the discussion, Natalia Pasichnyk decided to invite her students and colleagues to translate the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development for further publication in Ukrainian on the Verkhovna Rada's website. The document, adopted at the 1992 UN conference, informally titled Earth Summit, sets 27 principles fro environmental consciousness and sustainable development.
“The event organized by Natalia Pasichnyk for students shows that successful interaction with the audience is based on dialogue and not on an expert or moderator's monologue. An emphasis on the visual format, slides, or presentations that complement the speech also fits well for an online event. Another useful practice could be feedback from the audience, which can be gathered through questionnaires after the screening," sums up the invited expert and an experienced moderator, Olexander Stepanenko.
Photo - still from the film E-Wasteland by David Fedele, 2012.
