The penal policy for illegal waste disposal is too lenient, it should be stricter.
Also, citizens should be motivated to dispose of various types of waste correctly in the designated locations, it is necessary to re-organize the public discussion for the draft regulations in this area, which has been in the process for five years, and whose adoption was again postponed for the last quarter of this year.
These are the conclusions from yesterday's round table on waste management in the capital, which was organized in Podgorica by the non-governmental organization Green Home and the Ministry of Ecology, Spatial Planning and Urbanism.
"Although the topic is focused on the capital, I believe that the issue of waste management is a topic that we should talk about in a wider context, that is, at the national level. The topic of waste management is one of the sub-areas of chapter 27. It is this sub-area that has the most obligations in the action plan for fulfilling the final criteria for this chapter, namely 37 activities, and in this sense represents one of the most demanding sub-areas", said the executive director of Green House. Azra Vuković.
She pointed out that, in the first six-month report on the implementation of the action plan, they received information that the public hearing was held in August 2018.
"From then until today, the proposed draft law that was on public discussion has undergone numerous changes, and in the four-year period, social circumstances have also changed," said Vuković.
Assistant to the executive director for technical and operational affairs of Podgorica "Deponija" Ratko Pavićević he pointed out that burning tires on Ćemovsko polje is a huge problem, that it happened two days ago.
"It happens that they throw tires over the fence at our place and set them on fire. They drive them on trailers so that the fire can start as soon as possible," Pavićević pointed out.
He clarified that these cases were reported to the Environmental Inspection, and confirmed the writing of "Vijesti" that Montenegro will welcome this year without a location where car tires will be temporarily disposed of and stored.
Pavićević said that he does not know how far the Ministry of Sustainable Development and Tourism has come with the Study of choosing a location for the collection, storage, sorting and processing of waste tires.
Head of the Directorate for Waste Management and Communal Services in the Ministry of Ecology Igor Jovanovic he did not answer how far that procedure had come, and he pointed out that he could not "understand that the tires are on fire".
He stated that tires are non-hazardous waste, but burning them releases dangerous substances that pollute the environment.
Pavićević pointed out that in Italy a municipal policeman can stop a citizen with a garbage bag in his hand, to see if he has properly disposed of the waste.
"He can take the bag out of the container and try to find the owner based on the contents of the garbage, if he disposed of the waste improperly. Their fines are 700 euros," Pavićević said.
He pointed out that citizens should be motivated to properly dispose of waste, as the company recently did with the increase in the purchase price for scrap vehicles from 180 to 400 euros.
"It turned out to be a complete hit. We can't get as much work as we have," said Pavićević.
Vuković pointed out that at the level of Montenegro, according to official data, we still only recycle one to two percent of waste annually.
Green home project coordinator Petar Knezevic said that their survey, conducted in March of this year, among 503 respondents in the capital, showed that 97,2 percent of them believe that they dispose of waste where they should.
"On the level of Podgorica, the system for separating waste into dry and wet fraction is available according to the survey for 40 percent of citizens. In places where it is available, 54,5 percent of them claim not to use it. The reasons are that they don't have enough space for more bins in their households, nor information on how to sort them," said Knežević.
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