All landfills in Ukraine to be closed, minister claims

Landfills in Ukraine should be replaced by waste management facilities, such as incinerators and waste recycling plants, says Ukraine’s Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources Ruslan Strilets.

"All landfills should definitely be closed, reclaimed and forgotten as a bad dream," Mr Strilets  said in an interview with Ukrinform, Ukraine’s national news agency.

He admitted that this is a long-term perspective, since the appropriate waste management infrastructure needs to be created first.

"As of August 2022, we have already scanned the entire territory of Ukraine and mapped 207 locations where such facilities can be built. These are investment cases–any investor can come and build a suitable enterprise there," the Minister of Environmental Protection believes.

Mr Strilets expects that construction of waste management facilities will be facilitated by the new respective law, which will come into force in June 2023.

In particular, nine waste management facilities are planned to be built in the Kyiv region, with one of them in the Boryspil community, where land has already been allocated and international funding has been agreed on.

The Boryspil facility will receive all waste from the surrounding communities of Fastiv and Brovary.

As was reported by Vox Ukraine, more than 90% of waste in Ukraine was sent to landfills in 2021, with only 7% recycled.