What do residents of Poltava throw away into trash containers?

In November 2022, NGO «Ekoltava», together with NGO “Zero waste. Lviv”, under support from International fund «Vidrodzhennya», has launched a project that inspects the situation with municipal waste in host hromadas during russian invasion – particularly in Poltava and Lviv. The first activity was morphological analysis of waste in Poltava, thanks to co-operation with utility enterprise CMTE-1628. The analysis was based on inspection of the contents of a garbage truck, on sorting ground of CMTE-1628, near Poltava landfill in village Makukhivka. By now, the results are calculated. 

The biggest share of total amount of waste is food waste – 49,7%. Plastics (29,4%) are in the second place, and glass (6,3%) is in the third one. Other kinds of waste detected in given volume of trash are paper and cardboard (2,8%), ferrous metals (1,3%), non-ferrous metals (0,8%), fabrics (4,8%), hazardous waste (1,2%), bones, leather, rubber (0,9%), and remainder left after extraction of mentioned fractions (2,9%). 

The percentage was calculated as arithmetic mean of three consecutive measurements. More to that, the inspection was applied to waste removed from the same neighbourhood. For analysis, three check samples were taken, every one weighing 300 kilograms.

Experts of «Ekoltava» have compared the received results with those of 2020. Then morphological composition of waste was done using containers for mixed waste from container area in the neighbourhood «Brayilky» (Kucherenka str.). There were established shares of recyclables, organic waste and non-recyclable waste.  

Inspections of 2020 and 2022 have shown that the majority of mixed waste constitutes organic waste. Accordingly, experts suggest to pay prior attention to management of organic waste within the town. 

	2020	2022
Recyclables	18,2%	19,4%
Organic waste	53,0%	49,7%
Other non-recyclable waste	28,8%	30,9%

 

Basing on the results of 2022, specialists from «Ekoltava» conclude the following:

– the major part of mixed waste derives from organic waste;

– current rates of sorting glass, paper, and plastic remain miserable, despite the existence of specialized containers;

– once other kinds of waste go into containers for separate collection of glass, paper, and plastic (for instance, organic remnants; or non-recyclable polymers in containers for recyclable plastic), they cause a need for additional sorting by employees of CMTE-1628. Once organic fractions get mixed with roughly clean recyclables, they make them dirty, so non-recyclable remainder increases and the amount of valuable raw materials respectively decreases.

Into containers for mixed waste, as experts claim, there goes a lot of PET-bottles, paper, glass, though there are containers in the town for these very kinds of waste. Among polymers, a big part consists of handbags, cotton sticks, bags for pre-packed foodstuff, polyethylene film.

The low level of sorting derives primarily from the following reasons:

• Poor awareness of guidelines for sorting provided by CMTE-1628, 
• absence of informational plates that prompt what is allowed to put into containers marked «plastic», «glass», «paper»,
• absence of information about the destiny of recyclables sorted by citizens.

This is why it is necessary to pay special attention to enlightening and explanatory work with the population.

The inspection of morphological composition of municipal waste is a part of development of hromada’s strategy for waste management, it helps to stick to the ultimate and the most efficient system of waste collection and recycling.

Generally, the Project «Inspection of solid municipal waste management in host hromadas during russian aggression in Ukraine» is being implemented within the Initiative of the development of environmental policy and advocation in Ukraine, that is carried out by International fund “Vidrodzhennya” under financial support of Sweden.