After the fire at the Vilnius regional waste sorting plant, part of the accumulated mixed waste will be taken over by the waste management centers of the Utena, Alytus, Kaunas, and Panevėžys regions, says Vice Minister of the Environment Tomas Vaitkevičius.
"I am glad that Utena, Alytus, Kaunas and Panevėžys have said that they can accept mixed waste, and they will do so, and I hope that these capacities will be used," the Vice Minister said during a meeting of the Seimas Environmental Protection Committee on Wednesday.
According to him, in any case, waste accumulating in the Vilnius region needs to be sorted and incinerated, not stored.
"The priority is to sort waste as much as possible, burn as much as possible, and use the capacities of other regions," said the vice minister.
"If it is possible not to pollute, then it should not be polluted. Decisions cannot be made to store waste in a meadow, in an ordinary meadow, not to control wastewater. Such decisions cannot exist," he added.
According to T. Vaitkevičius, the factory destroyed by the fire will probably start operating from the beginning of next week.
"The optimistic scenario is that from the beginning of next week (it will start operating - BNS). As far as I know, mobile devices will be delivered on Tuesday that will start sorting mixed municipal waste," said T. Vaitkevičius.
As BNS reported, it is planned to sort some of the waste at the burned Vilnius factory again once the electricity supply is restored. Then, the factory would operate at 40 percent capacity, and the remaining 60 percent of the waste is to be sorted using mobile equipment.
Fire A fire broke out at a waste sorting plant in the Vilnius region on Sunday morning. It was extinguished on Monday. The fire burned down about 7,5 thousand square meters of the building.
The plant operated by Energesman sorts approximately 220 thousand tons of mixed and food waste per year.
The aforementioned plant is the main place where waste is sorted in the region. Municipal waste is brought to it from eight municipalities: Vilnius city, Vilnius, Trakai, Elektrėnai, Ukmergė, Švenčionys, Šalčininkai and Širvintos districts.
The author is Sniegė Balčiūnaitė
