(live here) – Is Haifa on the verge of giving up on recycling? After the orange recycling bins disappeared from Haifa's streets, it now appears that the blue bins, intended for paper and cardboard waste, are becoming increasingly scarce, much to the dismay of residents.
in the system haipo There have been many complaints recently about the disappearance of the blue bins, which were used to recycle paper, cardboard, and household cardboard packaging waste. Many residents who have become accustomed to separating their waste and contributing to a cleaner environment now feel helpless in the face of the decision to remove the bins.
Encourage recycling – and remove the bins
In recent years, the Haifa Municipality has invested resources in raising awareness of recycling and waste separation. "We can reduce the amount of waste that goes to landfill with a small but significant change - separating packaging and throwing it in the appropriate recycling bin," the municipality's publications have previously stated. However, contrary to statements, more and more recycling bins are disappearing from the urban landscape.
Last December we reported onhaipo The municipality's decision to remove some of the city's orange recycling bins - a move that has angered many residents, especially those who are careful to separate waste and recycle. "If they want to encourage us to recycle, why are they taking away our bins?" many ask. "It hurts motivation and the ability to recycle effectively."
Now, the blue bins are also disappearing. Residents complain that on entire streets, such as Abba Hillel Silver Street, there are no longer any paper recycling bins. A city resident said: "I contacted the municipal hotline 106, but I didn't get an answer. In the past, the blue and orange bins were together, which caused people to sort their waste. Since the blue ones disappeared, everyone throws everything in the green bin."
Is Haifa giving up on recycling?
While many municipalities in Israel are striving to increase recycling efforts and make solutions accessible to residents, in Haifa it seems that the direction is the opposite. The big question is – will we be forced to completely give up recycling habits in the near future, or will the municipality provide a real alternative that will allow residents to protect the environment? Time will tell.
The Haifa Municipality informed Haifa:
"The drastic decrease in the use of paper (such as newspapers) and the transition to digital means has led to a situation in which blue bins were often emptied completely empty. Because of this, it was decided to reduce their number throughout the country, including in Haifa."
Which of these responses is 'Some of the blue bins are collected empty?' If the truck driver is not blind, he can only collect bins that are sufficiently filled. And reduce the frequency of collection according to the rate of filling on that street. But please do not eliminate recycling altogether.
The solution to reducing the amount of recycled paper is not to reduce the number of containers, but to spread the collection out over a longer period of time – for example, once every two weeks instead of once a week. It is not reasonable to expect us to carry the paper with us in search of the nearest blue bin. The same goes for the orange bins.
The truth is that you can trust us, the residents. A QR code on the bin allows you to report a full bin and that's it. Collect only when necessary.
A bullshit answer from a stupid municipality. Even those who wanted to recycle will now not be able to do so.
Bullshit, our blue bins were bursting with paper all the time. They just didn't come to empty them. A really, really annoying situation. The whole world is switching to recycling, and in the greenest city in the country, recycling solutions are being reduced. Shame on the municipality.
exactly like that.
Here too, in Ramat Chen
Shock at the municipality of Chelem, what happened to them?
How helpless and how helpless.
How many lies and how many debauchery.
A municipality that doesn't fix potholes in the roads and sidewalks.
A municipality that risked the lives of its residents for years just to avoid harming wild boars.
A municipality that destroyed the Hadar neighborhood and turned it into a dying ruin.
A municipality that destroyed all the businesses on Ben Gurion Boulevard with endless renovation work that lasted years.
A municipality that destroyed all the businesses along Independence Street with renovation work that lasted years.
A municipality that allowed the construction of entire neighborhoods without parking spaces and without accessibility solutions.
A municipality that charges the highest property taxes in the country,
A municipality in its urban center refuses to accept anonymous reports of threats, even when it involves a threat to life!
A municipality that has kept entire building residents without access to the building by car for years, simply because it neglected to repair a collapsed retaining wall.
A municipality that doesn't even provide its residents with a garbage removal service, which would contribute a lot to cleanliness.
How come the residents are silent and don't raise their voices and file legal claims against her?
Disgusting, in my opinion it's just unnecessary and takes up space, people throw their garbage into the dumpster instead of throwing it in the trash, here in Haifa there are no cultures, trash cans should be placed instead, it's become a home for rats
The orange recycling containers constitute an impassable obstacle on many sidewalks and harm pedestrians.
In addition, they are open, which is a nuisance in many cases.
In addition, cats jump into the openings and leap out, which often causes panic among passersby.
Plus they are just bulky and difficult for trucks to empty (takes longer than a regular bin)
In addition, they are a nuisance to pests that enter through the openings.
Whoever planned, initiated, placed, and approved these bins has no place in a local authority because their judgment is fundamentally flawed.
I propose a quick committee to investigate who made the decision to purchase these terrible bins instead of the money going to more bin dumping that would prevent nuisances and wild boars, and to have him immediately fired from the municipality.
Ask the municipality for a Freedom of Information report on how many times they have received proactive requests from residents to empty recycling bins. I also often call about blue bins. See Aviv Lavi's article on the increase in the price of paper recycling for municipalities - and the resulting reduction in recycling.
The cardboard containers are mainly designed to collect cardboard boxes, not paper. So the cardboard boxes will be thrown into the regular trash cans. The use of paper may have decreased, not the use of cardboard boxes. So what exactly did the poet do?
When I called the municipality to find out why they had removed the orange bins, I was told that they had removed them from the main streets.
Because Yona Yahav prefers to invest in killing innocent wild boars.
Recycling will wait.
Actually, what you said isn't exactly true.
Regarding the wild boars.
I asked an employee of the Sanitation Authority in Haifa what is done with the pigs that are captured, and he told me that they don't kill them, but release them far from Haifa. So that they don't come back.
He added that they are being released at the northern border, close to the border with Lebanon, so that they can cross the border and live in the buffer zone with Lebanon.
Pretty smart in my opinion.
In Ramat Hadar, the blue bins are always completely full.
There have been no blue bins in Kiryat Haim for six months.
A few years ago, orange bins were scattered on Einstein Street, with a bin placed every 100 meters. Two weeks later, the bins began to stick together and the gap increased to 509 meters. A month later, all the orange bins were standing together down the street.
Is it any wonder the public is not cooperating?
The orange bins, like parking payment machines, are a headache and a high cost to the municipality.
In any case, check the information. The orange bins were also emptied in the municipality for regular garbage.
The cost of the special collection was at their expense and they did not receive an incentive payment from the state.
They said that the use of parking payment stations was discontinued to make room for public space. This is a bluff. They discontinued the stations because the cost of maintaining the stations, including collecting money from the stations, required manpower. It's easier to get money from Mango without investing a single shekel.
You got it, Jonah.
What's their excuse about the orange bins? That they're empty too? Haha, they said at the call center that they "moved them to recycling centers"? I didn't see a single orange bin compared to the one they moved from Moriah/Zerubbabel (near the Bonen Community Center).
In Ramat Almogi, the blue bins disappeared six months ago, even though they were full, and each time I had to contact the municipality to have them emptied. The municipality simply wants to waste our property tax money on paying for landfill and at the same time harm the quality of our environment.
There are no blue bins in Ramot Sapir either. And they were always full…
Yahav insists on turning Haifa into a dump, a rotten mayor who destroys every good plot of land here.
This mummy needs to go home, along with his partners in crime.
A false answer from the municipality. A stupid decision from the municipality.
Dirty streets, a little more dirt doesn't change the picture.
In Stromae and Gors, the bins have also disappeared, even though they were always full. And the batteries, cloths, and bottles can only be thrown in the green bins. It's a shame that as time goes by, more and more people recycle. Now I too have stopped recycling, and so have many others like me. I think this is laziness on the part of the garbage department. And I think the Ministry of Environment should intervene in the matter.
There are also a lack of recycling containers for electronics and lithium batteries, which are prohibited for recycling at existing sites. But are we only talking about bins? We had high hopes for Yona Yahav's new term after Einat Kalish went home. In practice, apart from the pig issue, which improved according to Yona's promise before the elections, unfortunately almost nothing has been done. Especially in the area of infrastructure such as the infamous Dori Street (in the uptown area), the Check Post North industrial zone (especially the Hermesh), roads in Camp David, Shimshon Street, and all that in a nutshell. Even the sidewalks are full of holes and potholes, and some of the parks are really neglected.
There were people who put household trash in the orange containers. Many didn't really recycle.
Stupid municipality.
Isn't it smarter and more economical to empty it once every two weeks instead of once a week?
In Pevzner near the theater, at least once every two weeks the blue bin for paper recycling always fills to bursting. Why is there no purple bin for recycling glass packaging in the Hadar neighborhood?
A casual response! In our country, the volume of dry waste is many times greater than the volume of wet waste. We are forced to go to the distant orange bin.
In America and Europe, waste has been separated for many years. Are they stupid and are we smart?
The orange bins have also disappeared from Holland Street in Denya.
On other streets in Denia, there are.
I called 106 and received no answer.
Someone from the city council told me that this was an order from our mayor, Yona Yahav.
It's a shame. Yona is a respected mayor and I voted for him in the election.
Please return the recycling bins.
On Berl Street in Neve Sha'anan, the trash can is usually full and all the papers are scattered around it. The place looks like a slum neighborhood.
Disgusting municipality!!! Instead of moving forward, we are going backwards. Shame and disgrace in 2025!!!!! Going against the cycle and thinking in such a narrow and egotistical way that it is as if there is no world around, no Earth. Mr. Yona Yahav!!!! You and all of us are residents of the Earth first and foremost and you and all the occupants of the seats in the municipality yes yes you are also residents of the Earth!!! By what right and audacity do you dare to remove the orange bins and now the blue ones from the streets? By what right do you charge the highest property tax in the country and not even allow us to recycle???? Until finally the understanding of saving the Earth came into play here and indeed people recycle and you in the municipality think that you are worth more than all the other things. Sea turtles that die from eating polluted sea plastic, a sea that Haifa is so proud of.
When I noticed this about a month ago, when five orange bins disappeared and only one orange one remained, I called the municipality and the answers were that the bins were interfering with walking on the sidewalk. Shame on you, Haifa Municipality. You turned Haifa into an ugly city of buildings and a second without wadis and now also a filth of plastic. We the residents want to keep this piece of land and our city enlightened.
If the blue bins are collected when they are not quite full, perhaps the frequency of collection should be reduced, and not the bins should be eliminated.
This is not true. Come to my neighborhood in Kiryat Shmuel and see for yourself how many bins are full and why there are no bins for recycling electronics.
There are, but they are areas. There is one near the stadium in Rome, below KSP, for example.