On this website, I seek to cover national and international developments that will impact on environmentalists across the world.
My earlier posts have commented on the future direction of waste management within the European Union, which impacts upon the United Kingdom as well as the other members states.
In this post, I am looking at Russia, a country where I have worked on a number of projects, where the potential direction of their waste management policies will be based on a proposal for a new Bill.
Many of the waste management concepts highlighted will be familiar to those in the EU involved within waste management and the wider issues of the investment in waste management infrastructure.
The proposed law seeks to encourage reuse, recycling, and recovery via energy from waste. Whilst, the Bill itself did not include mandatory targets for diversion of waste from landfill, there have been amendments proposed by the Ministry of Environment that include a mechanism for the Russian Government to have a subsequent right to introduce targets for various waste streams.
The latest amendments place duties on manufacturers and/or importers to be responsible for the management of waste from, or end of life of, manufactured or imported goods (similar to the producer or extended producer responsibility concepts within EU legislation, such as packaging and EEE).
The proposed system is to be funded through the introduction of environment fees that would be collected and deposited into a special Governmental Waste Management Fund. The funds collected would be used to:
- subsidise the costs of waste management companies that are not covered by existing household waste disposal tariffs (in effect, transferring the current regional system of subsidies to a federal system); and
- invest in new non-landfill waste management infrastructures through a public-private partnership fund.
Progress on environmental legislation can be slow in Russia. Altough, it is anticipated that the Bill will come into force sometime between January 2015 and 2016. Iwill keep you posted on any new developments in this area.