1^st November, Tulchyn (Vinnytsya Oblast). Strategy of integrated solid waste management (SWM) in Tulchyn target rayon has been presented in Tulchyn town.Tulchyn targetrayon covers the territory of three neighboring communities – Tulchyns’ka, Suvorivs’ka and Kanishevs’ka.  On 15^th November Session of Tulchyn Rayon Council, which is to approve the Strategy, will take place.

Tulchyn rayon, like most of rural rayons of Ukraine is suffering from constant increase of solid waste (SW) as well as from imperfect practices of SWM. Each rural community tries to improve the situation by itself (for example, to create its own landfill/dump or to export SW in any manner and to any place). It results in dumps, pollution and loss of valuable materials. So-called “official dumps” are also ecologically hazardous facilities. Rayon has 25 certified landfills out of 50, which were defined and created by local self-governing bodies. No one landfill meets the legal requirements. 17 settlements do not have landfills at all. The largest landfill of Tulchyn is overloaded. Its term of exploitation has expired.

Strategy on integrated solid waste management (SWM) in Tulchyn target rayon has been presented and discussed in a small conference-room of Tulchyn Rayon State Administration. Representatives of Rayon Council, Department of Housing, municipal enterprises working in SWM sphere took part in the discussion. On 15^th November Session of Tulchyn Rayon Council, which is to approve the Strategy, will take place.

Anatoliy Buzyk, Head of Tulchyn Rayon State Administration, underlined that the Strategy, basing on the experience of target communities, would make it possible to solve SWM challenge in the whole area. Oleksiy Avramenko, Head of Tulchyn Rayon Council, took part in the ceremony of presentation’s official opening.

During the discussion, representatives of territorial communities, target area members, expressed their opinions related to their own role and participation in Strategy’s development. Vitaliy Poberezhnyk, First Deputy Head of Tulchyn RSA and Head of Steering Committee, informed on integrated SWM in Tulchyn rayon as a whole.  

Situation with SWM in target area is critical: landfill is overloaded, rural communities are not covered with waste export at all and population does not wish to pay for SW export (only about 30% inhabitants of Tulchyn concluded the agreements with “Tulchynkomunservis” and pay the service. The above was stressed by Valeriy Vesnyany, Tulchyn Mayor. He absolutely supported the Strategy and proposed to create teams that would visit local population to conclude corresponding agreements.

Strategy contains short description related to SWM in Tulchyn target area, including SW morphological composition, main disadvantages and initiatives on improving of the situation. Also, principles of Strategic Plan were presented, including basic parameters of SWM system and description of expected situation, which could be resulted from Plan’s successful implementation. The document was presented by Andriy Artov, DESPRO SWM expert. Strategy is partially devoted to informing and involving the communities into Strategy’s implementation as well as to raising awareness of SWM challenges in rayon.

During the meeting, Leonid Tulovs’ky and Olena Ursu, experts of UNPD Project “Municipal Governance and Sustainable Development” told about the activities to be conducted with local population within the framework of Strategy as a whole and, in particular, related to separate waste collection. They also described the pilot project implemented with UNDP support. Within the project, the sites for separate waste collection have been created and equipped, training on proper SW sorting is being conducted and information and education video is under development.

Strategy was developed by Steering Committee on inter-municipal project implementation with support of Swiss-Ukrainian Project “Decentralization Support in Ukraine” (DESPRO) and UNDP Project “Municipal Governance and Sustainable Development”.

Materials were provided by UNDP Project “Municipal Governance and Sustainable Development”.