“Not at all what we expected”: recycling expert Kobenko found a conflict of interest in the “garbage” concept of St. Petersburg

The draft of a new concept for waste management in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region has not unreasonably caused heated discussions in the community of specialists, believes Alexander Kobenko, Chairman of the Waste Recycling and Secondary Resources Committee of Business Russia. In a commentary to a Rosbalt correspondent, the expert pointed out the real interests of the drafters of the document and the disadvantages of the project.

“The authors acknowledge that they rely on a very opaque system of source data, a lack and inconsistency of information, inconsistencies in official data sources. In this regard, modeling the scheme for the formation and disposal of solid municipal waste on unconfirmed information seems to be a risky idea. I hope that with the full implementation of the digital EGIS UOIT (the unified state information system for accounting for waste from the use of goods – Rosbalt), this problem will gradually be resolved. But at present, it would not hurt to conduct a full-fledged audit, according to the results of which we will understand all market participants, all operating and already inactive facilities, their characteristics and current load,” Kobenko noted.

The expert pointed out the importance of working with players involved in waste disposal and recycling, taking into account their opinions, development plans, and inclusion in the technological chain.

“In the concept, we see the promotion of the interests of only the regional operator. This is not at all what we expected. As part of the committee (Delovaya Rossiya – Rosbalt), we always focus on companies that are engaged in real recycling, invest in modern technologies and equipment and rely only on themselves. There is not a word about them in the concept,” Kobenko said.

In his opinion, the document is very theoretical in nature, the analysis and experience of other countries are given, but without real cases and projects.

“This means that no work has been done with market players, and I don’t really believe in armchair strategies. I would like to see the layout of objects before and after, with key changes, evaluate the parameters and number of new production facilities, analyze a dynamic financial model that includes all factors with access to the calculation of tariffs for the population, and so on,” the expert explained.

According to his observations, the concept pays insufficient attention to solutions to the problem of reducing the level of accumulated waste.

“The federal project “Circular Economy” includes both environmental education and waste reduction, but all this should correlate with each other and be adapted and tied to the territory. Regarding work with the population, for some reason, the authors refer exclusively to foreign experience, while in Russia (for example, in Moscow, the Moscow region) there are already enough of their own cases. And, as a resident of St. Petersburg for the last 3.5 years, I have not yet seen active work with the population and testing of various modern tools,” Kobenko added.

In conclusion, the expert expressed the hope that after the feedback, the document will be changed, since in the current version it is unlikely to be able to achieve the established goals of the waste reform.

As a reminder, in February, the new regional operator NEO, which entered the market of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region at the beginning of the year, published a draft Unified Waste Management Concept. Read the opinion of experts on the document in the material of Rosbalt.