Auditors: Russians to have nowhere to dump waste in 6 years

MOSCOW, Jan 13 (PRIME) – Russia's waste is growing so fast that all waste disposal grounds will be completely full in six years, the Audit Chamber said in a report on Monday after analysis of the national project for ecology.

“The growth dynamics of household waste is so fast that there will be no disposal grounds left in six years to dump it, and in some regions it will happen even faster,” the auditors said.

The disposal grounds in the Kamchatka, Primorsky, Altai, Leningrad, Moscow regions, in the Chukotka Autonomous District, and in the republic of Mordovia will fill very soon, and a reform for disposal of solid waste launched in 2019 is not enough, the auditors said.

“The lack of measures for stimulation and popularization of reusable goods and packaging materials and reduction of exploitation of single-use refractory goods and packaging…create the possibility that an efficient system of solid waste management won’t be created,” the report read.

Nevertheless, Russia’s ecology’s core problem is waste from production of mineral resources -- household waste accounts for only 55–60 million tonnes out of 4 billion tonnes produced in Russia each year.

Dumping of a large amount of waste at disposal areas without recycling it makes the disposal grounds block agricultural lands, the Audit Chamber also said.

The Ecology national project does not take into account climate changes that may reduce the Russian economy by up to 2–3% of gross domestic product (GDP) per year until 2030, and up to 5–6% of GDP for some regions. Russia’s climate is getting warmer by 150% faster than in the world, leading to floods, fires, and droughts, and reducing the soil bearing capacity in the permafrost regions.

The Audit Chamber also said the government spent 62.6% of budget allocations, or 37.9 billion rubles on the project for support of small and medium-sized businesses as of November 1, 2019.

“There is a management problem in the national project for small and medium-sized businesses. Receivers of the subsidies are not responsible for achieving the goals of the national projects, while the agencies responsible for that have no influence on distribution of the money and usually have no information about the activity of receivers of the money,” the auditors said.

The government will allocate more than 260 billion rubles to the Russian Small and Medium Business Corporation, Bank for Small and Medium Enterprises Support, Russian banks, the fund for support of small companies in the scientific and technical industry, and to other companies in 2019–2024 to distribute the money among the receivers of subsidies. But the heads of the regions are responsible for development of the economy in the first place.

“At the same time, the officials have no impact on the measures for development of small and medium-sized enterprises that these legal entities have. Thus, there is a discrepancy where one group gets the money while another group is responsible for reaching the goals of the national project,” the report read.

(61.2632 rubles – U.S. $1)

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