Information meetings with the residents of Svoboda district in Pomorie were held from 2 to 9 June 2025 regarding the launch of the second phase of the project ‘Holistic approach to waste management in the transition to a circular economy’ of Pomorie Municipality, co-financed by the LIFE Programme of the European Union. The aim of the project is to introduce a comprehensive and innovative approach to waste management and to introduce a new and fairer system for household waste payment based on the amount of the discarded waste.
In the first phase, which started in October 2024, households were requested to separate recyclable waste – paper, plastic and metal – in dedicated bags. The bags were collected on a certain day and hour from the entrance doors of the households. Residential building managers have been appointed to monitor the process and analyse the correct segregation of these types of waste.
Analyses show that before the start of the project in this area, mixed household waste subject to landfill fees was 80%, and after the introduction of separate collection, it is just over 20%.
The second stage envisages that households will dispose the separated waste by themselves – paper, plastic, metal, glass and biodegradable waste. For this purpose, new garbage containers will be installed, branded with the necessary information about the type of waste. The new shelter-type vessels will have video surveillance, controlled access and chip cards to be used only by residents of the residential building/area, in order to limit their access to other persons and to control the littering of other types of waste. The types of waste will be collected from specialised vehicles and delivered to the relevant recycling sites. For the recycling of clean and separately collected waste, the Municipality, respectively the citizens, do not pay a fee.
Non-recyclable waste will be collected by households in specially distributed grey bags containing an RFID tag/label identifying the household. These bags will be collected again from the entrances of households, according to a certain schedule, and there will be no need for the use of common containers. In the pilot project area, namely – Svoboda district, the existing grey containers for general household waste will be completely removed.
Four trucks are now equipped with readers for recording the amount of waste discarded by each household separately, collecting the bags left at the entrance. “This is in fact also the waste that is subject to charging and the smaller its quantity, the lesser will be paid for the waste collection services.”, explained Deputy Mayor Yancho Iliev, who together with the project team attended all meetings with citizens.
Household bins with biodegradable bags will continue to be used for biodegradable waste and households will continue to dispose them in containers labelled as such.
An application for mobile devices is also being developed, through which each registered person will be able to receive timely information about the collection schedule, points for separate collection, the amount of waste discarded from his household, used and remaining bags, etc.
The necessary consumables are distributed free of charge to households by the residential building managers and their contacts are available on the information boards at each entrance.