Pirot - the first municipality that successfully separated 2.6 tonnes of waste for recycling within the "Odvajamo" project

August 2022

This month, Pirot officially collected 2.6 tonnes (2600 kg) of household waste for recycling as part of the "Odvajamo" project, which is implemented by the Ministry of Environmental Protection of the Republic of Serbia, with the support of the European Union and the Swedish Embassy, thus becoming the first of the 17 municipalities included in the project to collect waste for separation and recycling.

The Project for Household Waste Separation - "Odvajamo" will establish a system for waste separation at the point of origin in 17 municipalities of Serbia by investing in equipment and informing citizens about the advantages of household waste separation because of its subsequent successful recycling reduction of the amount of waste that ends up in landfills. Municipalities that participate in the project are Sremska Mitrovica, Čačak, Pirot, Čajetina, Bajina Bašta, Dimitrovgrad, Bogatić, Babušnica, Ivanjica, Užice, Šabac, Kosjerić, Bela Palanka, Požega, Lučani, Šid and Pančevo. Pirot was provided with 10,715 blue bins for households for separating paper, plastic and metal, 228 yellow containers for separating glass and blue for paper, plastic and metal, as well as 3 vehicles for collecting waste that will be separated at the place of origin.

When it comes to environmental protection and recycling in Serbia, Antoine Avignon, program manager for the environment and the fight against climate change at the Delegation of the European Union in Serbia, spoke about the situation.

"Currently in Serbia, the household waste recycling rate is less than 2%, while the average municipal waste recycling rate in the European Union is 48%." EU waste policy aims to contribute to the circular economy by extracting high-quality resources from waste as much as possible. Actions like this are important not only for cleaning the rivers, but also for raising the awareness of all people about where waste ends up if we don't dispose of it properly." - said Avignon.

Vladan Vasić, mayor of the city of Pirot, reflected on the situation regarding separation of waste for recycling: "Today, 20 years after putting the regional landfill into operation, we realized our vision, we built a hall and installed equipment for secondary waste selection in it, and thanks to IPA funds, we received bins and containers for primary selection in households, as well as trucks for the collection of primarily separated waste. The distribution of bins to households is intensifying these days, containers will soon be installed in residential blocks and this process will begin full scale," said Vasić.

Project "Odvajamo" showed good cooperation between the municipality, authorities and the population

"What makes us happy is that citizens are accepting a new way of collecting waste and that the first collections from those parts of the city where bins have already been distributed have shown that citizens' awareness is slowly but surely changing. For us, it is very important that the quantities of clean material that can be separated and collected easily, and good quality raw materials are obtained for which we can get a good price on the market of secondary raw materials. We are glad that the relevant ministry and international donors recognize our efforts and that they have been following us and supporting us financially for years. All this encourages us to invest additional efforts in improving the waste management process, start the production of "green energy" and make an additional contribution to the preservation of the environment." - said Vasic.

The Project for Household Waste Separation - "Odvajamo" runs in 17 municipalities in Serbia, which will improve their waste management system through this project, and through the investments of the European Union, the Embassy of Sweden and the Ministry of Environmental Protection, 26 waste collection vehicles, over 90,000 bins and containers, as well as public opinion research and public information campaigns were supplied. The communication campaign and technical support for the Household Waste Separation Project is carried out by Pomilio Blumm, in cooperation with the local partner New Moment New Ideas Company.