How many regional landfills Serbia needs? - Completion of urgent revision of Waste Management Strategy by end-2014

Serbia is undergoing an urgent revision of the Waste Management Strategy which will end by the end of this year and which should show whether we need planned 26 landfills or less, yesterday, July 3. Radmila Serovic, the head of the waste management department at the Ministry of Agriculture and Environmental Protection said.

She outlined that the waste management is the process which must last since Serbia does not have economic power to solve these issues immediately.

- The new strategy should define the number of landfills needed but the document will also suggest technologies to be used in the waste management – Serovic said at the meeting with the topic Landfills in Serbia, cause and problem solution, organized by the Central-European Development Economic Forum (CEDEF) and the Serbian Chamber of Commerce.

She reminded that Serbia, out of 26 planned landfills to be built by 2020, has six today and the seventh in preparation. Apart from that, there are two sanitary landfills which are not regional.

Serbia, as she pointed out, due to non-existence of the Environmental Protection Fund, should apply for the EU funds for the promotion utility waste management and special waste flows.

She said that within the last two years, the recycling process percentage decreased, due to the fact that the Environmental Protection Fund was canceled, and that it is now up to the Government to decide whether and what kind of the new fund will be set up for that field. As she added, the environmental fees payment collection is now, after the Fund was cancelled, in the hands of the Ministry of Finance and Agriculture and Environmental Protection.

The president of the Executive Board of CEDEF, Jovanka Arsic Karisic, said that the wild landfills issue in Serbia is a burning one and that it needs participation of not only governmental representatives but also experts, entrepreneurs and NGOs.

Some of the ideas for waste usage eKapija wrote about are available HERE.