The Ecology and Natural Resources Ministry plans to launch the Clean Ukraine national program to recycle waste, an advisor to the Ecology and Natural Resources Minister for international issues Kostiantyn Yarmolenko wrote on his Facebook page on Wednesday.
“Only few Ukrainians know that our country is sinking in waste and garbage. According to our experts in the Ecology Ministry and independent ecologists, this is a huge volume of 36-50 billion tonnes of waste. This is over 1,000 tonnes of waste per Ukrainian, including pensioners and children. The major part of the waste is very toxic. They penetrate underground waters and wells. The direct consequence of this is an outbreak of oncological and other diseases all over the country,” Yarmolenko said.
The ministry will address ecological volunteers across Ukraine for help, as well as foreign experts to conduct an ecological audit of all landfill sites. A detailed virtual map of Ukraine mapping ecological violations will be created.
“We’ll invite all the leading international companies which have experience and solutions for waste recycling and ensure comfortable conditions for their work. Modern solutions allow recycling the major part of waste with profit-making, which minimizes the burden on the country’s budget,” he said.
An app for smartphones is planned to be created. The app will be designed to register ecological violations (illegal sewage discharge to rivers, landfill sites, oil spill, manmade disasters, etc) and will set their exact coordinates.
“Under the E-Participation concept we want to give direct instruments of environment monitoring to Ukrainian citizens – modern technology allows this,” he wrote.
Yarmolenko said that it could take 10-20 years to realize the program.
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