Is it Simply Waste? Or Can it be Used as Another Resource?
BUSINESS ROZHOVOR
14 ǀ POSITIV 4/2023
ecologically conscious people. All profits
from the reuse center are donated towards
adding greenery to the city.
For the work we do beyond the scope of
our legislative obligations, we have been
awarded two National Awards for Social
Responsibility. Our work has been deemed
exemplary for the entire country and we
have consulted many interested parties as
to how they might be able to do the same.
What about your sponsor activities? You
must receive a lot of requests.
Yes, in fact, we received so many that we
had to put our foot down. Instead, we
now draft our own thematic challenges
and mainly support projects that add to
or maintain Ostrava’s greenery. This year
we supported nine projects with a total of
one million crowns, and we are preparing
a similar sum for next year.
Did you ever receive an important visitor,
or is there perhaps another event you
remember fondly?
Over the years we had many visitors, plenty
of pretty important ones too, however,
we always try to present our activities
objectively and truthfully, regardless of who
we are talking to. I do not like sugar coating
things and hiding behind “modern” phrases
like “circular economics” and such.
What is your personal opinion on the
development of waste management
throughout the time you spent in the field?
A lot has changed, as a country we saw
improvement in many aspects of waste
management, but we also missed many
opportunities. Instead of following in
the footsteps of Poland and building up
infrastructure in the form of energetic
installations, sorting lines and waste
incinerators, all of which they constructed
from EU funds, Czechia was cutting down
on incinerator construction, instead
preaching that we have to recycle and
recirculate. In this way we invest money
into marginal changes like underground
waste containers. We spend hundreds of
millions of crowns on inefficient changes
without investing into basic infrastructure
which is guaranteed to bear fruit. We
wasted about 20 years this way, and now
catching up is going to get expensive.
If you had the chance, is there something
in the past you would have liked to do
differently?
I do not think I would change anything
major. We prefer to take smaller individual
steps, as this allows us to avoid large
mistakes. One of my personal faults,
however, is that I do not praise my
employees enough - this is something I am
really bad at, though I am working on it.
My employees know this and they told
me that even seeing me smile is praise
enough for them. Nonetheless I still hope
to improve this over time.
Can you predict, or maybe at least
present your dream of what waste
sorting and management could look like
in another decade or two?
Currently, we place too much emphasis
on waste sorting. It is not a goal, but
a method through which we can extract
materials and energy from waste. From my
point of view, I think that giving the people
two sorting options is ideal - one would
include all waste with further use (plastic,
paper, cans, beverage cartons, glass) and
the other could be used for anything
else. Modern technologies like our new
sorting line allow us to easily sort all of
the waste from the former of the two
options into material and fuel resources.
Anything that would then be placed in
the latter category could go straight into
the landfill. This would be ecologically and
economically optimal.
Backing up PET bottles has become a
trend recently. What is your opinion on
this? Is it a step in the right direction?
I think that it is quite a scam. The yellow
containers for plastic that we all know
and love allow us to collect around
82% of the PET bottles introduced to
the market. Now the Beverage lobby
wants to exclude PET bottles from being
collected in these containers, and wants
to make the citizens pay a 4 crown deposit
for each bottle so that they then have to
put all their bottles in a big bag and bring
them to the supermarket which will have
machines that collect the bottles. Even if
we move past the fact that the machines
in the supermarkets would cost billions of
crowns to purchase and implement, this
system would also require the construction
of additional sorting lines, one in
Bohemia and another in Moravia, where
the bottles would be transferred from
the supermarkets and then sorted, all of
which achieves the same result we already
have when using the yellow containers.
We are supposed to change our working
system to this only because multinational
corporations that produce beverages in
PET bottles want to take more money
from citizens and municipalities? This is
bound to be a detriment anywhere, with
no discernable positives. For example, in
Ostrava, we already have 100% of the PET
bottle waste accounted for, however, if
this system came into effect, the result
would be the same, but it would cost the
city and its citizens another 20 million
crowns per year. In summary, this idea
takes money away from municipalities and
their citizens and places it into the pockets
of corporations, all of this disguised under
the facade of being ecological.
Would you like to talk about the
cooperation you have been developing
with Tatra regarding a hydrogen
powered dump truck?
Thanks to this collaboration, we will
receive a prototype dump truck that will
be powered by hydrogen. We are excited
to be part of this vehicle's development.
The project is still in its infancy - the chassis
and engine will be a Tatra original and
the bodywork and superstructure will
be adapted to waste management. This
is a great opportunity for us to work on
reducing the cost of waste transportation.
In closing, is there something you would
like to tell our readers, or even the entire
country?
Redistribution, subsidies, etc. - all of this is
only holding us back. We need to get back
on our own two feet. At OZO we operate
without relying on subsidies, and that is
something we base our work on. We need
to once again rely on our common sense,
ideologies should not reign supreme over
the laws of physics. 1 + 1 will always equal 2.
Thank you for your time, and we wish you
the best of luck.
“
Working with children is
something truly valuable. We
are part of the few that put
this much long-term systemac
eort towards teaching
children these habits.
”
“
Redistribuon, subsidies,
etc. – all of this is only holding
us back. We need to get back
on our own two feet. At OZO
we operate without relying on
subsidies, and that is something
we base our work on. We
need to once again rely on
our common sense, ideologies
should not reign supreme
over the laws of physics. 1 + 1
will always equal 2.
”