Plastic Bottles across Caucasus Landscapes | Recycling?

One of the items I have been wondering about for a long time is how some of the recycling is working. You do hear the cries ("Butelki! Butelki!") of people that collect bottles, and we do see haggard men with outsized bags rifling through garbage containers, looking for PET bottles.


At the same time, these PET plastic bottles lie all around the countryside. Does anyone have any clue how much a recycler receives for a bottle? Are the prices staggered, depending on whether the bottle is intact and with a cap? And who is buying, ultimately? Is this an international market? Why are there no known collection points across the city, if anyone is interested in getting these bottles back?

The reason why this matters is because potentially a small nudge in terms of pricing would make it much more attractive to collect bottles, and take them out of the landscape, out of the rivers and landfill garbage dumps.

Any leads, anyone?

Caucasus Election Programs in the 1990s

Nani Chkhaidze compared the 1990s election programs of parties that won the elections in the South Caucasus. According to a "qualification scheme" (David Robertson, 1957), these are the differences between the countries:

• Democracy, social justice, welfare state expansion was most emphasized in Azerbaijan (followed by Armenia, than Georgia).
• Ecological issues were more popular in Georgian party programs, than there were in Armenia (and least relevant in Azerbaijan).
• Education expansion was also most popular in Georgia, again followed by Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Comparison across such countries are always hazardous, especially since party programs (and, arguably, elections) played a limited role, especially in the later 1990s. But the findings in ecology and education seem to support anecdotal evidence. In the environmental field, Georgia may also have the sense that it has more treasures to protect.

More detail is available on the CRRC website, but unfortunately only in Georgian.