Public Advisory
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The aim of the national Network is to answer the population’s questions and to find solutions regarding the environment. We give advices face to face, on the telephone, and via e-mails. The members of the Network organise trainings, develop databases, and expand their Internet services. On the website of HuMuSz, one can find people’s frequently asked questions and the answers to them (www.humusz.hu). The Network conducted two surveys in 2004. Carrying out the first one they wanted to know where the residuary medicine goes, while the second survey raised deep concerns what happens to the batteries of mobile phones.
Unfortunately, the first question was easy to answer. Most of the time, the inhabitants throw expired medicine into the rubbish bin, perhaps they flush it down the toilet, because at the moment pharmacies are not obliged by any rule to take back residuary medicine. This means that medicines sooner or later pollute the ground and the sewage. It is promised that the rule, which makes obligatory for pharmacies to take back medicine, will come into force in the close future.
The survey on mobile phone batteries showed that the rules on their own do not solve the problem. Obliging to them must be forced and controlled. In Hungary an estimated one million mobile phones, meaning approximately 70 tons of batteries (hazardous waste), become waste annually. This amount will increase, since a mass of the first generation of mobile phones is expected to be discarded. We already have a rule: the producers and distributors of mobile phones are obliged to take back and treat battery waste. In spite of this, members of the advisory offices hardly found any satisfactory examples in 325 mobile phone shops in Hungary’s twelve counties. Most checked shops do not even know about the existence of the rule, or pretend to be ignorant of it. The shop assistants gave various, but from an environmental point of view absurd ideas of how to get rid of mobile phone batteries. The three Hungarian mobile carriers have a large profit annually; TV channels, the radio, streets are full with their advertisements and one claims that it is the main sponsor of one of the richest football clubs in the world. The only thing they can not afford from this marketing budget is to solve the problem of dead batteries!”
The Network of Advisory Offices on Environmental Issues and HuMuSz turned to the Environmental Inspectorate General with a four-point plan to solve the problem.