Waste Collection And Transportation

In recent years, the corps of the Hungarian Defence Forces have put a great emphasis on environmental protection in their training sessions. Naturally, the situation is the same at the most extensive training event of the year, exercise Deployment Direction 2009 – told us Captain (eng.) Imre Csatlós. The environmental/health&safety officer of the exercise also told honvedelem.hu that in the last days of August, before the arrival of the first military unit to the area near Ercsi, they had completed a situation assessment. This document has also been attached to the handover-takeover protocol of the area.

In the course of the assessment they have identified the illegal landfills in the area. Their termination and the transport of waste was one of the first tasks of the soldiers arriving to the site of the exercise – said Captain Csatlós – and the troops had collected tens of cubic metres of garbage on the banks of the Danube and along the roads leading there. Of course, the Hungarian soldiers protect the environment not only by terminating landfills. Everyone has attended an environmental protection presentation back in their barracks, and learned that the area around exercise Deployment Direction 2009 is a particularly important zone that is protected by the NATURA 2000 program, therefore special attention must be paid to the natural resources of this land.

The troops were also told that along the banks there are so-called ’bank filtration drinking water wells’ which are specially protected by legal provisions. Moreover, the soldiers also try to protect the environment with a few unique technologies. For example they put a plastic tray under every parking vehicle in order to prevent the dripping oil from leaking into the ground. They do not generate big quantities of sewage because they use disposable plastic cutlery and crockery to avoid the washing-up of plates and cutlery several times a day. Plastic waste is collected selectively.

Captain Csatlós said that prior to the open days the commander of the camp ordered a new ‘garbage collection operation’. The troops have collected waste at the site of the river crossing demonstration and in the vicinity, and along the dirt roads and public roads leading to the bank of the river. The reason why they have repeated it is that they would not have liked if the guests on the main visitors’ day had said that all this garbage was left behind by the soldiers…

The environmental protection/health&safety officer of the exercise – who has a similar position in the Szentes engineering battalion – also told us that when the training event finishes another environmental assessment will be carried out, thereby proving that the troops have paid special attention to environmental protection during the deployment that takes almost one month.

About health&safety Captain Imre Csatlós said that the corps have prepared their troops properly, and everyone is aware that the exercise is a dangerous activity. Perhaps it is owing to this preparation that there hasn’t been any serious accident.