EcoLur
In this era of modern technologies, one of the most important problems in Armenia still remain unresolved – the problem of garbage collections. Despite the loaning funds allocated in this sector, as well as budget allocation, no up-to-date garbage management technology is being applied in Armenia. There aren’t any studies either, which will show the classification of garbage in landfill sites. According to expert assessments, the problem with garbage will remain unsolved in Armenia as long as there is no garbage sorting and recycling system introduced.
In the frames of the examinations carried out in the frames of ‘Clean Armenia’ project, there are around 2300 landfill sites in Armenia with aggregate surface of 430 ha. According to ‘EcoLur’ Informational NGO President Inga Zarafyan, only in Yerevan’s Nubarashen landfill site partial garbage management is carried out among these numerous landfill sites, where Japanese ‘Shimizu’ company is burning the collected biogas on 7 hectares. Garbage is simply collected in all other landfill sites, ‘We have toxic wastes, which shall be kept in a special way, but they find themselves in a standard landfill site. For example, I haven’t seen any hospital to be fined for non-adherence to the sanitary standards, but these wastes contain infected injectors and other hazardous materials,’ she added.
According to solid household waste management system development strategy of Armenia for 2017-2036, around 90 million Euros are needed for the proper garbage collection in Armenia. Some part of this loan money has already been used. Inga Zarafyan reminded about Yerevan Household Waste Management Loaning Project launched in 2015, the total value of which is 26 million Euros, out of which 16 million Euros is a loan. ‘This project doesn’t envisage either sorting or recycling. They say we can involve business for this purpose. Which business will agree to recycle the garbage without any sorting? Besides, Armenia in 2015 allocated 8.8 billion AMD for garbage collection, sanitary cleaning and landfill site operation and these funds were spent on transferring garbage from one site to another. This is not proper garbage management, as the garbage should, first of all, be cycled,’ Inga Zarafyan mentioned.
‘If we speak about tourism development, our primary problem is garbage collection: we can see terrible images on the river banks especially in the summer season. We experience problems with cleaning the river banks and riverbeds. We know how many restaurants directly dump their garbage into the river,’ Lusine Taslakyan said.
August 04, 2017 at 18:41