Buenos Aires - Buenos Aires is considered one of the most beautiful cities in South America and it attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists from all over the world every year.

However, when it comes to environmental protection, the changing city governments perform badly. And the problems are as big as the metropolis of some 13 million people on the Rio de la Plata.

While people across the globe have slowly developed a growing consciousness of climate change, hardly any of that can is evident in the Argentine capital.

Anyone who brings their own fabric bag to a supermarket instead of using one of the free plastic bags on offer will probably be brushed off as crazy.

Noisy air conditioning which runs while the windows or open or heaters that burn in homes with thin walls and draughts do not bother an Argentine.

There is no opportunity to improve insulation in a bid to save energy in the winter and keep cool in summer.

And despite frequently-blue skies, solar panels to provide electricity and heating are rare - state subsidies keep power so cheap that such environmentally-friendly instruments would be unable to compete.

However, environmental problems are most evident in the totally outdated rubbish collection system. According to the environmental protection organization, Greenpeace, residents of Buenos Aires produce nearly 5,000 tonnes of rubbish per day.

Given that no room has been made for trashcans in the narrow houses, the unsorted rubbish is often just tossed onto the pavement outside the house at the end of the day, in plastic bags from the supermarket.

On the street, an army of slum dwellers or so-called "cartoneros" (cardboard-gatherers), search for re-usable items - mainly plastic and paper - in the stinking heaps of rubbish.

They tear open the bags leaving orange peel, chicken bones and used sanitary items strewn about on the pavement. Later, formal rubbish collectors collect only the bags leaving a mess behind.

Whatever the some 8,000 "cartoneros" in the metropolis have not chosen to save from the garbage truck ends up in overflowing suburban dumps. As these are largely full, the situation is verging on an emergency.

In such circumstances, a Zero Trash Law of 2005 sounds almost like a joke. It stipulates that the rubbish in the dumps must be reduced through recycling, and not through burning. By 2020 there should be no rubbish left, the law says.

The first timid steps towards the implementation of the law, like the distribution of some garbage containers on street corners, ended in complete failure.

The conservative city government that was elected in the meantime reversed the course and favours burning garbage.

Juan Carlos Villalonga, of Greenpeace, is furious.

"It is just a matter of explaining to people properly," he says, Residents are filling the containers intended for reusable materials with all kinds of rubbish and rubble.

Graciela Gerola, of the city's environmental agency, contradicts Villalonga.

"The Zero Trash Law is actually ludicrous," she says in outrage.

Nowhere in the world has such an approach been taken. Simply producing recyclable rubbish is wishful thinking. The lack of an environmental conscience among the citizens of Buenos Aires is a real problem, she stresses.

According to Gerola, since the economic crisis of 2001 there has been very little money for environmental protection.

And yet, with the economy booming since 2003, environmental problems are growing at a record pace. By the end of the year, the city's environmental agency is set to present a new environmental concept.

Authorities are working on a proposal for new legislation that would set minimum in insulation standards for new buildings.

"Like in Germany," Gerola says.

A project is also set to be launched jointly with the Education Ministry to make environmental education a compulsory subject in all schools.

The project also foresees bus lanes for natural-gas-powered ecobuses, Gerola says.

However, Buenos Aires continues to produce enormous amounts of rubbish. And the environmental agency has yet to even mention sewage which flows freely into the Rio de la Plata. There is no such thing as a sewage treatment plant, and none is in the planning either. (dpa)