Households Waste Management – Source Separated

Public service for waste management in Slovenia are in the competence in each individual municipality (local authorities). Nevertheless, Slovenian legislation demands certain treatment of waste, including household waste. These rules are clear, not ambiguous, meaning that they define that household waste shall be treated at the source. We, individuals, are obliged to separate waste to certain categories, like, paper, plastic, glass, etc. Public services across Slovenia are not really satisfied with the performance of this obligation and it is not so rare that they perform inspection checks. That means that they empty certain waste box and they check whether appropriate waste is in the box or not. In the latter case, they search for evidence and based on evidences (like invoices with names) try to define individual, who has not separate the waste according to the rules. In addition, as we can learn from the media, pecuniary penalty might also be imposed to the whole block of flats, to the owners. This is of course much easily in case of individual houses. In any case, activities of checks by public companies competent for waste treatment raised a lot of critics. People are even complaining, that separation of waste is not their task, that it should be the task of public service. There are also complaining that public services should be more active in other fields of waste treatment, like punishing those who are littering in towns, in the nature, but not those, who never the less, put the waste, although not separated accordingly, into the waste-baskets. I admit, I did not expect complains which demands public service to separate the waste instead of waste holders. This simply not in line with the responsibility of the waste holders. It is simply the obligation of every waste holder to separate waste at the source and this is not questionable for decades now in the Member States in the European Union which started to separate waste already in 70’s of the previous century. This is not only a question of law, but the culture and personalities of habitants. It is rather clear that there will be certain individuals not respecting rules, but such a huge amount of complains, also officially published in the news, newspapers forums, etc. is quite astonishing.

Also, surprisingly, nobody is objecting collective penalties imposed to owners of the flats in certain block of flats. Separating household waste is not dangerous activity and strict lability is not applicable here. It is a fault based liability and there is no rule that waste holders are responsible jointly and severally. Although I personally support collective penalty, it should be at the same time stress, that we are missing legal base that would justify it. Simply, there should be a rule, that in case that waste box is used by certain condominiums and it is not possible for third person to use it, that they should be the owners of the condominiums that are liable jointly and severally. Without such a rule, is on my opinion, difficult to establish joint and several liability.

For decades people in Slovenia, in former Yugoslavia, were never obliged to separate household waste. Costs for waste managements were always socialised, never internalised. It is hard to change people behaviours and habits. At least two things are needed: (i) information and education at the one hand and (ii) on the other hand, legal rules and pecuniary penalties for violations, together with constant supervision and execution procedures. Lastly, Slovenian public services started to perform the last element of these conditions. I hope they will continue strictly and on continuous basis. At the same time, people should be informed and educated also with processes that follows once household waste has been taken by public services trucks. People should be familiarised how household waste is separated afterwards, what is happening, is it waste recycled or not, is it used for any other purposes, like transforming the waste into the energy, is it burned out and what is the consequence for the environment, etc. Public media like public TV, could offer certain time in the program for such education purposes. It is quite odd to expect that one can change somebodies behaviour, if there is no information and presentation of the whole picture, what are the costs of the waste management, how dirty work is performed by low class payed workers, just because somebody is simply too lazy to separate waste at the origin.

Categorised in: Blog

This post was written by Rajko Knez