There are extraordinary people all over the world doing things way beyond themselves. Today, I get the pleasure to highlight the Serbian Society of Emergency Situations.
Three years ago, Dr. Ivan Bozinovic came up with the idea to collect plastics from around his town of Paracin to recycle and then purchase medical equipment with the recycled funds.
Dr. Bozinovic had been challenged with not having the most basic of medical equipment to treat patients. Raising money for any cause can be a large hurdle to overcome, but Ivan looked around and saw that there was an abundance of something that plagues our environment each and every day, plastic.
Plastic is something that creates a great convenience for the modern world, but often times it is merely a quick disposable item sent to our landfills. The problem is, we have so much of it and only a small percentage of it gets recycled. There is so much plastic landing in our world’s oceans, that by the year 2050 we will have more plastic than fish in the ocean.
The idea of recycling plastics came to Dr. Bozinovic when he realized how much he was throwing away in his own home. You see, plastics are a commodity. Throwing plastics into the landfill is like throwing money away. Plastic has value and can be made into new things. When you recycle, it is saving our natural resources by not using virgin material.
Dr. Ivan started in his own neighborhood asking people to set aside their plastic bottles and containers. It has since grown into a town wide and neighboring village’s collection that involves restaurants, schools, hotels and the residential community at large. Over the last three years, 30 tons of plastic has been collected and recycled. And, equipment such as appliances for measuring pressure, otoscopes, strips for glycemia, and linens have already been donated to the hospital in Paracin. The next mission is to be able to purchase a magnetic scanner.
It is impressive to think about how one small town in the world can collect that much plastic. Think about this now on a global scale. The world uses a tremendous amount of plastic on a daily basis.
This is a project blending both a humanitarian and environmental approach. It is one that we should take note of and be inspired by. Daily, there are articles talking about the travesty of the amount of plastic pollution worldwide. There are scientists, activists, and ordinary people trying to figure out how to combat what to do with so much waste. Until we collectively use less plastic, recycling is a solution to another problem. It is creating a win-win scenario for both humanity and the planet.
Learn more about Dr. Ivan Bozinovic and the people of Serbia changing the world, one piece of plastic at a time.