The Regional Environmental Reconstruction Programme for South Eastern Europe REReP Record

Taking it to the streets By Steve Graning Sofia’s mounting rubbish crisis follows an unfortunate Western precedent New members of the European Union often emulate their western neighbours in the pursuit of higher living standards, but ignoring the consequences of increased consumption has some ugly and messy consequences. One case in point is Bulgaria. Sofia is taking a series of short-term decisions to cope with its municipal solid waste problem—a problem that came to light in 2005, when residents of Suhodol, an outlying area of Sofia that held the Bulgarian capital’s primary landfill, began protesting against the pollution and odour caused by the waste disposal site. When the dump was closed, Sofia was left to scramble for takers of its solid waste. Meanwhile, the city bundled its rubbish and stored it at temporary, aboveground locations in nearby villages. Two towns, Tsalapitsa and Karlovo, agreed in 2007 to take Sofia’s waste, but such was the quantity that the agreed-to amounts were transferred in less than a year. Suddenly facing a garbage crisis without a long-term solution, Sofia officials voted to reopen the Suhodol landfill amid protests from green parties and some local residents. Such was the resistance in Suhodol that a movement emerged to officially detach the suburb from Sofia Municipality, according to The Sofia Echo. Even if the city succeeds in reopening the landfill, experts predict it will use up its remaining capacity in just 18 months. Suhodol residents, however, are unwilling to put up with the current state of affairs for even that long. According to 56-year-old Roumen Pavlov, he and his neighbours gather for weekly protests against the landfill. With Pavlov’s home just one-and-a-half kilometers from the dump, wind blowing from the direction of the dump “stinks very strongly,” he complains. Unfortunately for Bulgarian authorities, there are other, bigger neighbours to worry about as well. In January 2008 the European Union threatened the country with sanctions for non-compliance with environmental impact assessment regulations. While it remains uncertain whether or not the EU will follow through on its threats, Bulgarians would do well to look at a fellow EU member who has not only been warned over municipal waste, but is now headed to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) over the matter. Flirting with disaster Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s recent victory speech included two key pledges to the Italian people: to rescue struggling national airline Alitalia; and to resolve the acute rubbish crisis in Naples. Also saddled with a sputtering economy and the largest national debt in Europe, the thrice-elected prime minister would seem to have bigger fish to fry; that he would instead point to one city’s municipal solid waste problem speaks volumes about how dire the situation has become—with the army even called in to assist the cleanup. Nonetheless, the EU decided in April that Italy had been given enough chances to solve the problem, and that the country should face prosecution for repeated failure to deliver a suitable waste strategy. Italy’s third largest city, Naples has been flirting with a solid-waste disaster for years, with the city’s major landfills nearing (or even exceeding, depending on who is making the calculations) full capacity. With the landfills full and complaints mounting from local residents, operators finally locked up their gates. Angry citizens, who had been fighting the opening of new dumps or incinerators out of health concerns, accused the owners of illegally filling the dumps with hazardous industrial wastes. The local government finally threw up its hands in despair, and as the days passed and garbage trucks no longer made the rounds, private waste accumulating on the pavements grew into formidable rubbish heaps. Although below the EU average in percentage of waste recycling, Italy as a whole is far from the worst in Europe. The European Environment Agency, for example, has praised the country for proportionally reducing its landfilled biodegradable waste, and northern Italy successfully collects about half of its waste as separated content, according to waste expert Luciano Moreselli of the Department of Industrial and Material Chemistry at the University of Bologna (Rimini branch). Southern Italy, however, has achieved separated waste content of less than 10 percent—no surprise, given that most of the country’s recycling and incineration plants are located in the north. The ECJ, having sent repeated warnings to Naples and the Campania region, has finally summoned Italy to court, citing officially the country’s failure to provide a “clear timetable for the completion and entry into operation of the sorting plants, landfills, incinerators and other infrastructure needed to resolve the region’s waste problems.” This being the case, Bulgaria would be wise to pick up several clear signals which emerge from Italy’s run-in with the EU. First of all, regional and national governments will be held accountable for what would normally be seen as a municipal failure. Second, throwing money at a problem is not enough: Over the past 14 years, the Italian government has spent more than EUR 1.3 billion trying to end the Naples crisis. Third, the EU will not accept the presence of organised crime elements as an excuse—at least if the tough talk from EU Environmental Minister Stavros Dimas is anything to go by. Free energy With the added allure of free energy as a by-product, incineration has become a popular means of disposal. According to Ivaylo Hlebarov of Bankwatch Bulgaria, Sofia’s waste management strategy foregoes any binding targets for recycling and waste prevention in favour of incineration, making it “a pathetic document focused on big infrastructure.” As in many places, finding a location for an actual plant is much more difficult than garnering theoretical support for incinerators. Coincidentally, Naples has also based its waste management hopes on incineration. Although some feel that the same group that runs the local waste dumps is also responsible for blocking the construction of incinerators, it is clear that there are also local objections to their construction. In an ironic turn of events, the trash is being burned anyways—on the street by local residents. Citing odour, pests, toxic fumes and concerns about disease, locals started setting fire to the piles of rubbish after weeks of accumulation. The odour of rotting rubbish turned into toxic fumes. While a clearly nearsighted solution, the act of burning the filth is better characterised as one of desperation. Although Sofia residents might resort to similar measures if faced with a similar situation—as has happened in the past—it is more likely that illegal waste dumps will absorb excess flow. Illegal tips are a common problem throughout South-Eastern Europe, which is far more sparsely populated than Western Europe, and enforcement is slack. According to Hlebarov, there are several small tips around Sofia and a large one at the city’s western perimeter. He also points out that rivers are frequently dumped in, as evidenced by accumulating rubbish in the county’s river basins. Big city consumption Given their high population densities, cities naturally produce large amounts of consumer waste. Land values, however, are also high, which leads to two major complications: it is expensive to purchase land for waste disposal; and landowners want to protect their investment. The latter complication also frequently leads to issues related to environmental justice, as rich neighbourhoods use their superior wealth and education to manipulate the legal system to keep landfills and incinerators out of their ‘backyards.’ Due to these social and economic dynamics, waste management facilities inevitably end up in poor neighbourhoods, rural areas, or other urban areas that are willing to absorb the waste for a fee. As urban areas sprawl outward and rural areas become suburbs, surrounding areas become less and less willing to take on city rubbish when landfills reach capacity (or are needed for their own waste), and also when suburban land values rise. Once the cheap options for urban waste disposal are exhausted, cities are left with a series of far tougher alternatives. One option is to keep looking for other places to dump the waste—places usually farther and farther away. The City of Chicago, for example, trucks its waste up to 160 kilometres to reach landfills beyond its sprawling suburbs. Seen from this perspective, it should not come as such a surprise that Naples is shipping its solid waste as far afield as Germany—a situation that takes on even more irony in that many experts blame Naples’ overloaded landfills on the fact that their operators have been filling their dumps with industrial waste from the country’s industrial north. Germany, for its part, was caught in 2007 illegally dumping municipal waste in southern Hungary, showing that few states are immune from dirty dealings related to waste. Morselli is nevertheless optimistic about the future, citing the improving European legislation and high separated waste targets for 2013–15 as reasons to believe that the Naples experience will not repeat itself elsewhere, adding: “I hope it will be the last time.” With proper planning in cities like Sofia, he could be right. Steve Graning is a project manager in the REC’s NGO Support Programme.

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