[ad_1]
Avoid the laws
Vakaro žinios has already announced that garbage is being transported to the Kaunas and Klaipėda waste incineration plants from abroad, although it is prohibited by law, Environment Minister Simonas Gentvilas confirmed to the newspaper.
According to him, the Department of Environmental Protection has launched an investigation, but the prosecution has not yet been contacted. According to S. Gentvilas, power plants in Lithuania can burn up to 10 percent. non-Lithuanian waste or tens of thousands of tons. According to the minister, the power plants themselves are not to blame for this, according to which the documents are falsified by intermediaries: about 20 companies transport waste to the Klaipėda cogeneration power plant and about 15 to Kaunas.
“Please understand that waste can be sorted and recycled here in Lithuania, but instead of being sorted and recycled into new products, it is simply incinerated. This is probably the scheme, “explained S. Gentvilas to Vakaro žinios.
It turns out that garbage can be imported into Lithuania from other countries completely legally. But only as secondary raw materials, for processing. But in Lithuania, these “secondary raw materials”, after “adjusting” the documents, become “Lithuanian”, which can be incinerated or disposed of in landfills, because in our country both incineration and landfills are the cheapest of all. the region.
Too little trash?
Why is garbage allowed into Lithuania legally? Do we have very few of them ourselves? And won’t the recent scandal be a pretext for raising taxes on incineration and landfill? Vakaro žinios addressed these issues to the Deputy Minister of the Environment in charge of waste management Raminta Radavičienė.
It turns out that the Seimas adopted a ban on importing waste from abroad for incineration and dumping, and we have no right to ban the import of waste due to European legislation prohibiting restrictions on the free movement of goods. After all, according to the EU, garbage is also a commodity, because it can be recycled and turned into useful things: fabrics and the like.
“It is declared that the waste destined for recycling travels from abroad. However, our economic entities manage in such a way that only part of the waste is recycled, everything else goes to incineration plants, “emphasized R. Radavičienė.
Will raise taxes
According to her, the Ministry of Environment proposes to increase taxes on waste incineration and landfills, so that it is not worth transporting waste from abroad to Lithuania.
“Now the landfill fee in Latvia is 61 euros per ton of waste, in Poland 65 euros. With us – 10 euros. The Estonians plan to increase the fee to 90 euros next year. Latvia does not have any incineration plants. of waste Such a situation And what comes out?
When, due to high taxes on landfills, such disposal is an expensive pleasure for the neighbors and there is a certain amount of non-recyclable waste, then it is necessary to look for where the waste can be disposed of cheaper.
We do not want to become a cheap waste disposal country, so the ministry will propose to increase the landfill fee to 50 euros per ton, ”explained the deputy minister.
Why increase taxes on landfills and incineration if it is not legally possible to transport foreign waste from landfills to incinerators or incinerators? Maybe you just need to tighten the controls? According to R. Radavičienė, that is not enough.
“The cheap element would disappear: the incentive to bring waste to Lithuania. If the rate were higher and we match the prices of waste management with other countries, it would no longer be worth it for intermediaries to try to circumvent the law, “said the deputy minister.
Beautiful plans
The interlocutor assures that a 5 times increase in the landfill fee does not mean that residents pay 5 times more for garbage disposal.
“It’s popular to talk like that, but it’s a cheap trick. Landfills are objects that must soon be forgotten.
The state invests in infrastructure that allows trash to be disposed of before it reaches the landfill. I mean containers, places where people can transport waste, packaging, textiles, separate collection and treatment of food waste, etc. All the conditions exist that would allow municipalities to boycott waste entering landfills after using the available infrastructure. Higher taxes would be an even bigger incentive.
It is necessary to see who is not using the capacity, because the awareness of the population in the classification exceeds the willingness of the local government to meet the expectations of the population. We cannot live among mounds of landfills, “summarized R. Radavičienė.
Comment from Rimantas BRAZIULIS, member of the Council of the Lithuanian Green Movement:
I believe that the directive prohibiting the shipment of waste from abroad was “pushed” by large industrial companies, so it would be cheaper to dispose of waste generated in smaller countries. That even three waste incineration companies are needed: in Vilnius, Kaunas and Klaipeda. Although it was clear that he would take the garbage, for example, from Finland itself, and burn it in Lithuania.
Previously, the Finns had built car shredding equipment in Klaipeda, transported tens of thousands of cars by boat, shredded them and transported the resulting waste to our landfills. Because in Finland, landfill taxes are several times higher. It was even worth it with the shipping and shredding costs. And the metals were returned to Finland for recycling.
I don’t know if that equipment still works now. It is very likely that it still exists, and the waste is not transported to landfills, but incinerated, because Klaipėda’s Fortum belongs to them.
Trash has always been in the interest of the mob. Garbage is inevitably generated, huge amounts of money circulate in this area, not only in Italy, but everywhere. Politicians are simply pushing, making decisions that benefit those who pay the most.
When we started building power plants in Klaipeda and Kaunas, it was already obvious that we wouldn’t have enough waste to be able to work at full capacity. And it was clear that in this case the garbage would be brought from outside.
Countries that have real governments, which unfortunately we do not have, are encouraging their own companies to send waste to semi-civilized countries like Lithuania. Build factories here and transport garbage.
There is really no lack of environmentalists with us to be able to control the situation. However, the beginning of a corrupt system occurred when we built factories with capacities several times greater than our waste. If our controllers started detecting something now, they would be out of work immediately.
Why is the minister out of control? Because he would resign immediately.
[ad_2]
