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Start of the separate waste collection in Svoboda district, Pomorie

All households in Svoboda district, Pomorie, received brown kitchen trash cans and biodegradable bags, which they will have to throw into the brown food waste bins by themselves. They received green bags for glass waste, which will also be disposed by themselves in the green containers, as well as yellow bags for collecting plastic, paper and metal, which will be left once a week in the entrance hall of each residential building.

Within six months the yellow bags will be examined by the responsible person for each building involved in the process and by experts from the Municipality, after which they will be collected by a specialized vehicle of “Chistota – Pomorie” and transported to a recycling site. The aim is to follow the process of separate waste collection at the source and to carry out additional consultations with the households in case of discrepancies.    

Clarifications and detailed instructions on how to separate waste collection were given during 10 meetings, held with residents in all 32 blocks in the neighborhood by the Mayor Ivan Aleksiev and his team.

“With the amendments to the Local Taxes and Fees Act, the “pay as you throw” model will be introduced in the whole country. To facilitate the process, Pomorie Municipality launched a project aimed at conducting a large-scale information campaign and preparing an entirely new design of the waste collection system in Pomorie. The first step was taken with a campaign in block 13 – ‘I know what I am throwing away’, which achieved up to a 70% reduction in the total waste to be paid for by households. This is the first project, the success of which largely depends on the citizens of Pomorie, their consciousness and responsible attitude,” according to the Mayor Aleksiev.

Marin Todorov – Eco Expert in Pomorie Municipality added: “In the campaign in residential building 13, the highest percentage of collected biodegradable/food waste was 60% of the total waste. In order not to avoid mixing this kind of waste with the residual one, Pomorie Municipality started distributing brown buckets only for food waste. The aim is to achieve high results in separate collection, to set a good example for the rest of the city. The process is mutual – we, as an administration, provide all the conditions for separate waste collection and you, as responsible citizens, do this conscientiously. The responsibility we assume towards each other is leading in the process and without your active participation, achieving good results is unthinkable.” He also specified that it is extremely important that the separately collected waste is not contaminated so that it can be handed over for recycling and not sent back to the landfill, although collected separately.

The meetings were also attended by the Deputy Mayor Yancho Iliev, the manager of “Chistota Pomorie”, the project manager and the project management team.

‘For this year, the cost estimate for waste collection services is BGN 5.2 million. At the moment, one kilogram of waste costs us about 1 lev, if not collected separately. In order to reduce the amount of mixed waste, respectively the waste fees for its collection, transportation and disposal, we need to learn to collect separately, which will save us part of the waste fee” specified Yancho Iliev.

The project ‘Holistic approach to waste management in the transition to a circular economy’ of Pomorie Municipality is co-funded by the LIFE Programme of the European Union.