The statement was made by the head of department of improvement of territories and communal services of Minregion, Maksym Barinov, on June 24, during the round table discussion featuring representatives of international projects of the German society for international cooperation (GIZ) and the Swiss-Ukrainian project “Decentralization support in Ukraine” DESPRO.

According to the official, there are several obstacles to conduction of reforms in the area of domestic waste disposal. For instance, local self-government bodies in Ukraine do not have an opportunity to set tariffs for waste disposal services because of monopoly of domestic waste processing and burying market.

Other obstacles to reformation of the industry include unreasonably large number of landfills and refuse dumps, which do not comply with the standards of the European Union; low level of implementation of biogas extraction systems for alternative electric power production on the landfills; impossibility of usage of funds, received from producers of packed goods for utilization of packaging materials, by local self-government bodies, and negative appeal of domestic waste disposal industry in terms of investment, resulting from imperfection of the legislation in force.

“In order to ensure stable work of all market players, implement energy-saving technologies, create conditions for attraction of investments for increasing the share of recycled and utilized domestic waste and decreasing the share of buried waste, Minregion has developed a series of normative and legal acts”, said Maksym Barinov.

Particularly, we should mention the draft law “On Introduction of Amendments into Certain Legal Acts of Ukraine on Domestic Waste Disposal” registered in Verkhovna Rada under #1742 of 14.01.2015; the Law of Ukraine “On Introduction of Amendments into Certain Laws of Ukraine on Ensuring Competitive Conditions of Production of Electric Energy from Alternative Energy Sources”, adopted by Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on June 4 of the current year, and the draft Law of Ukraine “On Packaging and Packaging Waste”, developed by Minregion jointly with Minnature.

Maksym Barinov also said that the German society for international cooperation (GIZ) conducted a research of domestic waste production volumes and studied the situation with domestic waste burying and implementation of separate collection of resource-valuable components of domestic waste.

“Beside that, GIZ specialists have developed the terms of reference for creation of inter-municipal domestic waste disposal landfill in the city of Poltava with simultaneous closing and re-cultivation of old refuse dumps. After the presentation, the region’s management approved the implementation of the proposed technical solutions in Poltava oblast”, he stated.

Beside that, Maksym Barinov noted that, as DESPRO already had the experience of community unification around domestic waste disposal issues in Vinnytsia (Tulchyn raion) and Sumy (Romny raion) oblasts, the Ministry proposed and received the agreement of DESPRO and GIZ to unite efforts in facilitation of sustainable development of domestic waste disposal sphere in Poltava oblast.

Based on the materials of press-service of Minregion