(Pidgirtsi) While landfill number 5 near Kiev is popular with stray dogs and hungry birds, its mounds of garbage that emit a foul odor are a nightmare for Ukrainians living nearby.
“It stinks, it’s excruciating. We all have heart problems, shortness of breath, ”complains Nina Popova, a 73-year-old retiree who lives in Pidgirtsi, a village about thirty kilometers south of Kiev.
Breathing loudly, she adds that her children “suffocate” when they come to see her.
Thirty years after its independence, Ukraine is still struggling to equip itself with a waste treatment system, a situation that poses health and environmental problems in this poor country in Eastern Europe.
According to the presidency of this former Soviet republic, more than 6,100 official and 33,000 illegal dumpsites are scattered throughout the territory, most of them overflowing and not meeting safety standards.
With its 63 hectares, landfill number 5 which torments Mme Popova is one of the largest in the country.
“Ukraine is drowning in garbage and the situation is getting worse every day”, worried in September Yulia Svyrydenko, then deputy head of the presidential administration.
The situation is all the more alarming as the bio-waste that decomposes in landfills emits a lot of methane, a gas whose important role in global warming is raising awareness.
Lack of means
Since 2018, a law has made the sorting of waste compulsory. But little follow-up occurs, and most often Ukrainians throw their garbage in bulk in large bins, which are then dumped in a landfill.
Result: of the approximately 10 million tonnes of solid household waste produced annually by Ukrainians, only 4% is sorted, according to the presidency.
To make matters worse, the country has only one incineration plant, insufficient to dispose of even the capital’s waste.
Symbol of the slow pace of change, landfill number 5, which has been hosting most of Kiev’s rubbish for the past thirty years, was due to close in 2018. But, for lack of a new site, it continues to operate.
According to experts, the lack of financial means largely explains this situation.
The authorities spend less than 10 euros per tonne of waste treated, against 100 to 170 euros in Western Europe, explains Sviatoslav Pavliouk, executive director of the Ukrainian Association of Energy-Efficient Cities.
“This amount does not allow a real treatment of waste. It only provides for their transport to a field and their burial, ”he emphasizes.
To devote more resources, it would be necessary to increase the bill that Ukrainians pay for garbage removal, an unpopular measure that the authorities are reluctant to take, underlines Kostiantyn Ialovy, an environmental activist.
Local initiatives
Exasperated by this inaction, Yevguénia Aratovska, a 42-year-old economist, took matters into her own hands and launched in 2016, in Kiev, a small sorting station called “Ukraine without waste”.
“I realized that a lot of people weren’t aware of the fact that you have to sort, or the possibilities that exist to do it,” she says.
Khrystyna Ritchmarenko, a 29-year-old schoolteacher, came with several bags full of garbage.
“When we start sorting, we realize how much garbage we are producing. And that’s scary, ”she said, lamenting the absence of a sorting point near her home.
Some cities, like Kiev, have started installing recycling bins, but they are still only a handful.
However, more than 45% of Ukrainians cite the lack of sorting bins as the main obstacle to this practice, according to a poll published in November.
But many experts also point to the responsibility of ordinary citizens, few of whom are interested in the impact of their waste on the environment.
For Mr. Pavliouk, it is therefore necessary to start by sensitizing the youngest by making them visit landfills, for example.
And for Mr. Ialovy, it is urgent to “change the culture of Ukrainians vis-à-vis garbage”, otherwise, “the whole country could turn into a dump”.