"Garbage Reform": the first problems

In early February, the focus of the state bodies suddenly turned out to be garbage. It is likely that the “garbage reform”, which started on January 1, 2017, came across the first obstacles, now you have to urgently decide something.

On Wednesday, the State Duma in the first reading adopted a bill, which should increase competition in the “garbage market”. For this, as conceived by the authors of the document, excess state regulation in the field of waste management must be eliminated.

The author of the bill is the government, but it developed it in the specialized Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology, submitted the document to the deputy of the deputy head of the department Murad Kerimov.

Now the law provides that regions can choose contractors for the construction of facilities related to the collection and processing of garbage, only from the list of organizations approved by the federal government. The government bill excludes this requirement.

Garbage truck photo of Moscow / Moscow-Live

As noted in the conclusion of the State Duma Committee on Ecology and Environmental Protection, in the next two years, the procedure for waste work should change in all regions of Russia and new infrastructure should be created: waste disposal landfills, garbage and processing enterprises.

In theory, the adoption of the law means that in the near future, the mass construction of enterprises related to the processing and storage of garbage will unfold in the regions - in fact, there may simply be a quiet registered landlords. According to approximate estimates, about 70 million tons of garbage are formed annually in Russia, at the moment a little more than 4 thousand “waste disposal facilities” have been registered, but the Ministry of Natural Resources reported that there could be about 110 thousand places of “illegal storage” of garbage in the country.

In Europe, the placement of garbage at the training grounds - that is, in other words, on huge landfills - is the most expensive way to recycle. In Russia, on the contrary, the easiest and cheapest way to get rid of garbage is to take it to the training ground.

Polling in the north-east of Moscow. 2015 AGN "Moscow"

Since 2017, “garbage reform” has been in the country. It consists in the fact that each region should develop schemes for waste management and choose through the competition of a single regional operator. In receipts for the payment of utility services of citizens, a new expenditure line will appear for the disposal of MSW, and manufacturers and importers of goods will pay an environmental fee.

Also on Wednesday it became known that the Ministry of Natural Resources instructed Rosprirodnadzor to create a single system of “electronic control in the field of waste”. According to Minister Sergei Donskoy, it will unite all existing monitoring systems of illegal landfills. “Our goal is to make sure that the source of the problem is clear, as well as so that the instructions for its liquidation are received by the authority that is responsible for this. Because the same Rosprirodnadzor can only exercise control, and not engage in garbage collection, ”said Sergey Donskoy.

Waste dump in the water protection zone of the Oka River Department of Rosprirodnadzor for the PF

Especially the project of the Ministry of Natural Resources is interesting in that the agency is going to integrate not only state and regional systems, but also bases created by public organizations, primarily ONF. The Ministry of Natural Resources told Kommersant that more than a dozen regional maps are already operating, as well as the project of the All -Russian Popular Front (ONF), General Cleaning, in which an “interactive landfill map” has been created . “Each network user can place an application for illegal garbage dumps, a large landfill or a“ gray ”training ground that formally possessing all the documentation, but grossly violating environmental legislation,” the ONF. Representatives of the Ministry of Natural Resources have already met with the curators of the project to discuss the inclusion of their card in the combined system.