MINSK, 30 May (BelTA) – Belarus will change its approaches to waste management in the coming years. It will eliminate all small municipal solid waste dumpsites and set up regional waste management centers, Deputy Housing and Utilities Minister Vitaly Smirnov said at the opening of a Belarusian-Polish seminar on the collection of industrial and consumer waste, waste processing and usage, BelTA has learned.
Collected consumer waste will be delivered to large sites where it will be sorted and recycled into secondary raw materials or compost.
“There are 162 large municipal solid waste dumpsites and over 900 small dumpsites in Belarus. According to the national strategy on managing waste and secondary material resources, in the coming years Belarus will close all small sites and convert large sites into regional waste management centers,” Vitaly Smirnov said.
A waste sorting plant in Vitebsk will become the first such center. Construction of the plant will begin in October-November 2019. Plans are in place to set up some 30 centers. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, for example, will finance a project on waste management in Pukhovichi District and Cherven District of Minsk Oblast.
In turn, Deputy Ambassador of Poland to Belarus Marcin Wojciechowski stressed the importance of waste management and said that Poland is ready to share its best practices with Belarus. “We would like to invite Belarusian specialists to Poland in the autumn to demonstrate the technologies we employ,” he said.
The Belarusian-Polish seminar on the collection of industrial and consumer waste, waste processing and usage has been co-organized by the National Marketing Center at the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Embassy of Poland in Belarus, and the Belekoresursy association. The Economic Cooperation Department of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Belarusian Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Ministry, the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management of Poland, and the international law company Arzinger & Partners have also helped arrange the seminar. Belarusian and foreign experts, representatives of the relevant ministries of the two countries, representatives of the private sector delivered their reports at the event. The experts discussed possible avenues of bilateral cooperation and the implementation of investment projects, held B2B talks.
