In 2021, the community hygiene public enterprise (PE) of Skopje, the “Komunalna higiena – Skopje” (PE Communal Hygiene – Skopje) has managed to select and bale 538.8 tons of waste. The total quantity of collected waste last year was 166,678 tons. This means that the PE was able to select a modest 0.32% of the collected waste from the garbabe containers, while the remaining quantities have ended at the Drisla landfill.
As PE “Communal Hygiene” revealed for Meta.mk, in both their centers in 2021, 5,649 kg of PET packaging and nylons, 36,570 kg of paper and cardboard boxes, and 496,530 kg glass were selected. This PE doesn’t have a licence to recycle, compost and incinerate the selected waste, so it sells the selected waste to waste management companies.
For quite some time, PE Communal Hygiene has had only two centers for waste selection and baling – in Karposh and Vardarishte, even though last year, the PE’s management announced that each of the 10 municipalities in Skopje will receive its own recycling yard. So far, this promise wasn’t fullfilled.
Still, the main obstacle for the full realization of the primary and secondary waste selection is the enormous sums of money that the City Hall of Skopje and the PE will have to invest. On the territory of Skopje so far, PE Communal Hygiene placed 400 to 450 containers for waste selection. Also, primary selection of the biological waste is done by the households in Vlae, in the municipality of Karposh. This pilot project will continue this year, and the plan is to expand it to other Skopje areas, within the financial situation of the PE Communal Hygiene.
Nevertheless, the primary and secondary waste selection in Skopje did not see any advances and has remained unchanged in comparison with 2020. The data shows that in that year also, only 0.3% of the collected communal waste in Skopje was selected by PE Communal Hygiene in the centers for selection of plastic, paper, and glass.
Unlike North Macedonia, in the EU member countries, from year to year, the levels of selected waste are on the rise, but also the quantities of waste that are deposited at landfills are declining. In EU in general only around half of the complete waste that is produced ends in the landfills while the remaining quantities are recycled, composed, or is incinerated.
