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The European Union Waste Directive requires that all food waste be sorted and disposed of in special containers no later than January 2024. Failure to do so will result in fines for Lithuania.
The Environment Minister, Simon Gentvilas, promises to raise the landfill tax if municipalities are not interested in collecting this waste. According to him, the State Waste Management Plan included the obligation for metropolitan areas to start collecting food waste from 2019.
Former “peasant” Environment Minister Kęstutis Mažeika says the situation is bad, because some municipalities do not even intend to collect this waste.
Head of Alytus RATC: By sorting food, waste management got cheaper
Algirdas Reipas, President of the Lithuanian Association of Regional Waste Management Centers and director of the Alytus Regional Waste Management Center (RATC), is convinced that innovation is feared in many municipalities.
“It simply came to our knowledge then. Fear dominates. Especially since the Ministry of the Environment has prepared a study that indicates that separate food management makes waste management more expensive. And we have shown that it is the opposite,” he said A. Reip to BNS.
According to him, collecting a ton of mixed waste in Alytus costs 150 euros a year and food, only 70 euros. Residents pay about 20 euros a year.
According to Reip, fears that the population will not classify food waste or misclassify it have not materialized. A family in the Alytus region collected around 100 kg of food waste this year, and in total around 4 thousand. heaps. It is expected that next year it will collect more, around 6 thousand. heaps.
“It just came to our knowledge then. It shows that we are twice as good as the average European at planning food purchases. …) Our people also know how to store food and sort it well. Especially waste food. the production of vegetables: what is peeled, shaved, cut in the kitchen ”, said A. Reipas.
According to him, Alytus has one of the most modern food waste management technologies in Europe, 10 million LTL has been invested in it. euros. In addition, it is planned to invest another 2 million. for the improvement of the compost.
“We are preparing a project on how to better clean compost, prepare waste for composting, anaerobic digestion and produce cleaner and higher quality compost from impurities,” said A. Reip.
Vilnius is creating infrastructure, Kaunas says it is not economically useful
Ilja Karužis, Head of the Department of Energy of the Vilnius Municipal Administration, informed BNS that the infrastructure for food waste containers is currently being developed.
“Vilnius is implementing an EU-funded container depot installation project, which consists of installing semi-buried food waste containers. At the end of 2021, the hiring of food waste collection and transport services is foreseen through public procurement ”, he pointed out.
Radeta Savickienė, head of the Kaunas Municipality Environmental Protection Department, says that collecting food waste from the population would not be economically profitable. According to her, the Kaunas Region Waste Management Center conducted an analysis of these waste management options and found that none of the alternatives is economically viable.
“After evaluating the investments and the final benefits, negative indicators of the economic net present value were obtained,” R. Savickienė told BNS.
According to her, it would theoretically be possible to collect almost 9 thousand. tons of waste.
“Therefore, the annual amount of food waste is too small for its separate collection to be economically viable,” said a municipal spokeswoman.
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