In Serbia, 26 regional landfills are planned, which will be centers for the storage of all municipal waste, but currently there are only ten of them, and the biggest problem is the disposal of municipal waste in places that do not have adequate infrastructure and are not intended for it. If municipal waste is stored in unsanitary and uncontrolled landfills, it can further pollute groundwater and surrounding springs.
The good news is that the Ministry of Environmental Protection is working on the construction of six new regional landfills, so that could improve the situation to some extent. What ends up in nature, in unsanitary landfills and landfills, potentially becomes a serious risk to human life and health. In our municipal waste, due to the lack of primary selection, we can very often find other components, namely metals, construction, medical and pharmaceutical waste.
That is why it is very important that we work on developing a system of primary selection, which implies the collection and separation of waste at the source itself. In the field of municipal waste management, Serbia is in a good position as far as regulations and their compliance with European Union regulations are concerned, but their implementation is disputed.
The situation on the ground does not correspond to what is prescribed in the laws themselves. The problem is the missing infrastructure and insufficient awareness of citizens. The insufficient capacity of local self-governments to implement everything delegated to them in a good way with the resources and finances at their disposal is noticeable. That is why pilot projects and European funds can be a great incentive, especially for smaller environments.
The cross-border cooperation project "BEST Cooperation in waste management - to a sustainable environment" financed by the European Union and implemented by NALED in cooperation with the Center for Ecotoxicological Testing stands out as successful. The City of Novi Pazar and the Municipality of Tutin from Serbia and the municipalities of Mojkovac, Bijelo Polje and Kolašin in Montenegro participated in it.
Municipalities have also achieved concrete benefits - manuals, as well as infrastructure that enables them to better manage municipal waste. Novi Pazar received 1.500 bins and a waste collection vehicle. Mojkovac received 500 bins and a press for baling waste, and the results from the field show that people in those areas develop environmental awareness and take more care to preserve their environment.
Good examples of waste management include landfills that were previously problematic, but now can be a role model. We also have some centers that operate according to the highest standards and use the best available technologies. For example, the Vinča landfill has now regulated the collection of municipal waste in Belgrade in a good way, and the next step should be the use of municipal waste as an energy source.
The improvement of the deposit system for the collection of packaging waste, which NALED has been advocating for years, stands out as an important measure. There are announcements that starting in 2027, that system will come to life. To begin with, the deposit system should treat plastics and cans. It is, in fact, a returnable system that foresees that, when the products are consumed, the packaging will no longer end up in a municipal landfill but will be re-entered into the production process.
NALED advocates the use of new digital solutions, applications that will enable a modern packaging waste management system in Serbia.
The author is the director for sustainable development at NALED
This project is co-financed by the European Union within the financial instrument of pre-accession assistance (IPA II) through the Serbia-Montenegro Cross-Border Cooperation Program 2014-2020. The contract for co-financing with the funds of the European Union was signed with the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Serbia - Sector for contracting and financing of programs from the funds of the European Union.
