MINSK, 21 August (BelTA) – The government has approved a strategy on managing production waste and consumption waste, BelTA learned from the Council of Ministers’ resolution No.444 of 18 August 2025 that has been published by the national legislation registry website.
The strategy takes into account universally recognized principles and norms of international law, international treaties of Belarus, and the legal acts stipulating the country’s obligations. The strategy is a complex document that establishes the main areas of work on efficient and safe management of production waste and consumption waste.
The purpose of the strategy is to develop a comprehensive waste management system in order to achieve a waste utilization rate of at least 90% by 2040 while complying with the carbon neutrality principle. This level is supposed to be reached by cutting down on human-made emissions as much as possible and by implementing environmental projects that absorb greenhouse gases (reforestation, rehabilitation of damaged peatlands) while using (burning) waste for energy.
The achievement of the purpose and the fulfillment of tasks of the strategy will proceed in three stages. The first stage lasts till 2030, the second is 2031-2035, and the third is 2036-2040. To achieve goals of the strategy, there are plans to implement state programs and investment programs, including regional and industry-specific ones, as well as to prepare plans, schemes, legislative acts, and other documents affecting waste management.
A number of measures are supposed to be taken, including setting up a single government body to regulate and control waste management. Unified approaches will be developed to managing consumption waste and production waste similarly to household waste management routines. Plans have also been made to limit the excessive use of packaging in the production of goods (for example, the packaging volume may not exceed 50% of the product volume), to encourage the use of environmentally friendly (recyclable) packaging, and to establish a list of products that require the use of secondary material resources to make. In addition, there are plans to compile a list of types of products (goods) which cannot be manufactured because the waste generated by their use cannot be recycled or is difficult to recycle.
In Belarus there are plans to improve the legislative framework and the waste collection and record-keeping system, and to introduce waste-free and low-waste technologies. There are plans to improve separate waste collection and the system for collecting secondary raw materials and textile waste through a network of collection points, to gradually close garbage chutes in apartment buildings, to modernize containers and garbage trucks, build new facilities for sorting and using solid municipal waste as well as landfills for its disposal.
Republican government bodies and organizations subordinate to the Belarusian government, municipal executive and administrative bodies, and legal entities need to take into account provisions of the strategy when developing state programs, investment programs, including regional and industry-specific ones, plans, schemes, legal acts, and other documents affecting waste management in order to achieve a waste utilization rate of at least 90% by 2040.
Republican government bodies and organizations subordinate to the Belarus government, oblast administrations, and the Minsk city administration in accordance with their competences will have to submit information on progress in implementing the strategy to the Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Ministry by 1 April of the year following the reporting year.
Apart from that, the Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Ministry together with the Housing and Utilities Ministry will have to submit generalized information about the strategy’s implementation progress to the government by 1 June of the year following the reporting year.
The Council of Ministers resolution comes into force after its official publication.
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