About 85% of rural communities in Romny rayon (district), Sumy oblast (region) do not have an organized system of collection, removal and disposal of solid waste. Each of the communities alone cannot build a modern system of solid waste management. Therefore, at the level of district authorities, they have had an idea to combine efforts and resources of rural communities and the town of Romny by creating a common system of integrated waste management.

This system is able to cover 32 rural communities and the rayon (district) centre community, which is a total of about 80,000 people. All participating communities have entered into a Memorandum of Cooperation, where they identified the goals, objectives and procedure of co-operation. The Local Working Group was established to study the technical, organizational and financial approaches; it included specialists represented by the communities, rayon (district level), and involved experts. Joint activities are coordinated by the Steering Committee, whose task is to take the necessary key decisions at all stages of the project development.

Currently, the communities and rayon authorities are developing the Strategy for Integrated Solid Waste Management in Romny target region. The Strategy will form the basis for the project implementation. In order to develop the Strategy, the Step-by-Step procedure for waste management project planning has been applied (source: Wilson, DC, Whiteman, A., Tormin, A. Strategic Planning Guide for Municipal Solid Waste Management. - WB, SDC, DFID). At this stage baseline data is being collected, an introductory survey of residents of the town and villages has been conducted. The study has found that about three-quarters of villagers, who do not have centralized waste collection today, would like to organize this process. Almost half of them would be willing to separate waste at the household level. These and other results of the survey indicate certain positive preconditions for the introduction of centralized waste management. At the same time, this work will require efforts and resources for the informational, motivational work with the population, primarily in rural areas.

Technical assistance in the development and subsequent implementation of the Strategy is provided by the Swiss-Ukrainian Project “Decentralization Support in Ukraine” DESPRO. The Ministry of Regional Development was also involved in the project planning in Romny rayon. The Ministry had already participated in such inter-municipal project before: in Tulchin rayon, Vinnytsia oblast, it delegated a representative of Public Services and Amenities Department to the Steering Committee. The developed Strategy was reviewed by the Ministry of Regional Development (MinRegion); subsequently they received a positive opinion and the Strategy recommended for implementation.

February 11, 2014, in Romny rayon of Sumy oblast, a meeting of the Steering Committee was held on developing the project of integrated waste management. Lyudmila Poltorachenko (Head of Municipal Solid Waste Management, Public Services and Amenities Department of MinRegion) emphasized the importance of combining the efforts of several communities to create or improve the waste management system. She also noted that today there are just a few examples of inter-municipal cooperation in the field of solid waste management, that is why MinRegion is focusing on such projects.

Vyacheslav Sorokovskyy

DESPRO Expert