Trucks full of waste from Riga and the region keep arriving at Latvia's largest landfill "Getliņi" in the middle of the working day. Some of the trucks are likely to contain municipal waste along with flowers and fruit and vegetable peelings, or biodegradable waste. Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of municipal waste are sent here every year, half of which is landfilled. The goal to reach by 2035 is to only landfill 10% of all waste.
Last year, 90 tonnes of bio-waste was recycled at Getliņi, most of it mechanically separated. Only 12% came from the brown bins where biodegradable waste has to be disposed of, "Getliņi Eko" said.
"The bio-waste tunnels, which process bio-waste, have a total capacity to process 125,000 tonnes of bio-waste per year. What we currently receive in separate collections varies between 10,000 and 15,000 tonnes per year, which means 10% of what is needed at most, and the rest is currently separated," said Līga Šmite, the company's Head of Environment and Development.
Public opinion polls show that awareness of bio-waste sorting is increasing. Around 14,000 tonnes of bio-waste have been managed in Latvia this year - almost double the amount managed in the same period last year. But this increase is only from 2% to 4% of the total waste.
"We are at the beginning of the road, we have a long way to go, we need to work at all levels. We need to work at the level of the municipality, at the level of the national legislation, at the level of the citizens, at the level of the waste managers, at the level of the building managers," said Valerijs Stankevivičs, Chairman of the Board of the waste manager Clean R Ltd.
In Rīga, brown containers had to have been installed outside apartment blocks as of March. A total of 8,000 containers are planned in the capital, but currently it is 2,000 short.
Moreover, even if there are brown containers, building managers have found a way to circumvent the rules by installing the smallest container with the least frequent collection, and residents end up paying more, said Jānis Aizbalts, Chairman of the Board of Eco Baltia Environment.
"That's why I would add to the binding rules that not only mandatory but also mandatory minimum volumes. Now stop pretending that in 60 apartments such a container fills up in two weeks. Seriously? And seven green [municipal] ones fill up three times a week. Well, that's an example from an average apartment building in Riga," said Aizbalts.
The municipality will soon start penalizing building managers for not installing brown containers, said Viesturs Zeps, head of the council's housing and environment committee.
"We are still going the good-faith way, when building managers send notices to residents, send informative messages, now there is this campaign. So we are still giving a conditional handicap because the aim is not to punish. The aim is to make us all understand why we sort, and understand that, in fact, sending waste to landfill is the worst possible thing for our future environment. That's why we sort," said Zeps.
