The habits of citizens throwing away all waste, including glass packaging, in the same place, will be changed by adopting a new legal waste management solution, as announced by the Ministry of Sustainable Development and Tourism (MORT) for the first quarter (January-March) of 2020.
Glass packaging in Montenegro is now disposed together with other miscellaneous waste, and the ministry of Pavle Radulovic said that this will not be the case in years to come because the new law foresees the separation of glass from other waste. They also recall that the separate collection of waste, with the precondition that a minimum of separate collection of dry and wet waste, is provided by the State Waste Management Plan.
As proposed by the Waste Management Act, glass waste packaging will be regulated through a part related to packaging waste, which will be the responsibility of the manufacturer or importer of the packaging. "Manufacturers will bear the costs of the organized collection, gathering and processing of waste packaging. If manufacturers do not organize such a system, they will pay the Eco-Fund fee, and the funds from that compensation will be used to finance the collection, gathering, and processing of special types of waste, including glass packaging waste.
Please note that the adoption of the Waste Management Act is planned for the first quarter of 2020," the ministry said. Glass belongs to one of the most durable materials and the time for the glass bottles and jars to dispose of is estimated at a million years. Since it is fragile and as such damages the living world, its recycling is recommended in every form because the glass can be unlimitedly recycled.
In the European Union, some countries have introduced a deposit system, and on average they collect and recycle 90 percent of glass and plastic bottles and cans.
Sweden introduced this system first in 1984, and in the group of ten countries, the last to join was Lithuania, which doubled the rate of the waste collection very quickly. In the region, only Croatia has introduced a deposit system, and in Serbia announced they would do this for years.
Director of Serbia's Environmental Protection Agency Filip Radovic announced the introduction of the deposit system at the beginning of the year. He stressed that the introduction of the deposit system should motivate citizens and industry not to deposit waste in the environment and clarified that Serbia would have appliances where citizens would place the packaging and receive money for doing the same. He did not specify when that might happen. In Belgrade and other Serbian cities, in certain locations, there are bells for the disposal of glass packaging. In the capital of Serbia, they are set where there are plenty of shops and restaurants.
In Podgorica, there are more and more underground containers, and in the region, their usage is diminishing
In Podgorica, ordinary containers have been replaced with underground ones in many locations in recent years. As the relevant authorities from the City Capital have indicated that the advantages of underground containers compared to ordinary waste disposal facilities are large - they provide more efficient garbage collection, hygiene is improved. However, experiences from the region are not the same.
Mayor of Belgrade Goran Vesic recently said that in Belgrade there are 400 recyclable containers, and they have been placed instead of the underground ones, which proved to be very bad. "In Belgrade, we currently have a total of four hundred recyclable containers. They are placed on the site of former underground containers, which proved to be very bad. Most of them failed, and the firm that maintained them went into bankruptcy. That is why we decided to replace them with the recyclable containers," said Vesic.
Recycling also brings peaceful dreams
Changing habits in the way of depositing the glass packaging will bring peace to the citizens of the center of Podgorica, who claim that they do not have peace due to the noise made by some caterers who do not choose the right time to throw away glass packaging from the shops into the containers.
"When they unload glass bottles into a container, the noise is unbearable, often in the late hours, as well as in the afternoon, when it's time to rest," one of the fellow citizens said.
Text by Borko Zdero, on May 28th, 2019, read more at Vijesti
