This issue was discussed during a roundtable meeting “Household waste management – European way of development”, organised by MinRegion and DESPRO.

 

 

We traditionally do not pay our attention to where garbage is going. We occasionally notice short news about the problems of full up landfills, but this news does not perturb us at all. Meanwhile, every Ukrainian generates more than 300 kg of various garbage per year, and the whole country throws more than 11 million tons. Thus, our state is slowly moving to a waste collapse...

 

By Dmytro Synyak

 

Waste-related problem is a constant headache of the local self-government workers, for they see with their own eyes: legal landfills, most of which were created in Soviet times, do not conform to modern norms, and illegal ones, growing like mushrooms after the rain, gradually turn into ecological disaster zones.

Fortunately, last year “the issue of garbage disposal” has finally moved from a dead point: the Government approved the National Waste Management Strategy, and the Verkhovna Rada made several amendments to the legislation. However, due to a number of factors, many of the norms enshrined in the law are not yet in force, and the terms established by the Strategy are not followed.

To discuss all these issues, the Ministry of Regional Development, Construction, Housing and Communal Services of Ukraine and the Swiss-Ukrainian Project “Decentralisation Support in Ukraine” (DESPRO) initiated a roundtable meeting “Household waste management – European way of development”. This roundtable was held in Kyiv, within the framework of the 16^th International Specialised Exhibition “Communtech-2018”.

More than 200 specialists gathered in the hall: representatives of international and non-governmental organisations, oblast administrations, leaders of AHs, as well as city and village heads.

The Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine was represented by Oleksandr Semenets, Deputy Director of the Department of Environmental Safety and Licensing Activity, the Ministry of Regional Development, Construction, Housing and Communal Services of Ukraine – by Maksym Barinov, Head of the Department of Territory Landscaping and Communal Services, and Alyona Babak, the Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Construction, Urban Development, Housing and Communal Services, represented the Verkhovna Rada.

 

 

Alyona Babak assured that her committee will meet already next week “to discuss a number of draft laws, including those that will facilitate waste collection and disposal”.

Partly answering Ms Babak’s accusations of inaction, Maksym Barinov made a statement from the Government, presenting the draft Law of Ukraine “On Municipal Waste”.

 

 

According to Mr Barinov, the new law will have the norm that will allow to transfer waste management to outsourcing instead of establishing a communal enterprise, when there is such a need.

And Oleksandr Semenets, for his part, promised that the Government will soon introduce a number of different registries, “which will ensure the responsibility of waste producer, as well as improve waste treatment and disposal infrastructure”.

 

 

The main focus of the roundtable meeting was on the peculiarities of creating regional strategies that should be part of the National Strategy.

Tetyana Omelyanenko, researcher at the State Institution “Institute of Environmental Economics and Sustainable Development of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine” noted that the regional plans should be compiled for 10 years, and every two years they should undergo a check-up procedure.

 

 

Oksana Ilyasch, lecturer of the Poltava National Technical University, told about the cluster approach in the development of regional policy in the field of household waste management in the Poltava Oblast.

 

 

The roundtable meeting was concluded by the speech of Yuriy Matvyeyev, member of the Board of the Bioenergy Association of Ukraine, senior researcher of the Institute of Technical Thermophysics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, who presented the prospects of using domestic waste for the production of thermal and electric energy.

 

 

Joerg Meissner, representative of the AEU OOO – Ukrainian German joint company “Alternative Energy Systems and Environmental Technologies”, spoke about his project on electricity production from biogas at a landfill near Vinnytsia.

 

 

Questions to Dmytro Laznenko, DESPRO expert, candidate of technical sciences, and his answers, are available in Ukrainian in the form of blitz-interview HERE

 

 

The full version is available in Ukrainian – please click HERE