Strategic tasks for municipal waste management in 1998-2010
Waste management is one of Latvia’s environmental priorities in its environmental protection policy plan. To provide municipal waste management services to all residents of Latvia and ensure environmentally friendly and safe waste disposal, certain objectives and activities are to be carried out.
The basic concept in municipal waste management is: each pays for one’s own produced waste.
The main objectives of the municipal waste management strategy are the following:
1.To minimise the harmful impact on environment caused by uncontrolled waste dumping in unwarranted places and to offer waste management in areas which previously were not covered by waste management services:
- by 2002: to gradually achieve provision for 90% of centralised collection of all produced waste;
- by 2005: to gradually provide increase in the number of residents (up to 85%) who are provided waste collection services;
- by 2005: full termination of waste dumping in unwarranted places;
- by 2007: all residents provided accessibility to waste collection;
- remediation of all places of unwarranted dumping.
2. To minimise the impact of dumping sites on environment:
- by 2000 the number of landfills should be reduced by 50%;
- by 2010 ten waste landfills should be arranged that would comply with all sanitary requirements;
3. To promote recycling and reuse of municipal waste, thus reducing the amount of waste left for future generations:
- to minimise the amount of disposable waste;
- to resume package recycling;
- to provide disposal of medical and hazardous waste in special sites.