On February 27, experts from the Waste Management for Ukraine (WM4U) programme, together with the Vinnytsia Region State Military Administration, the Vinnytsia Regional Development Agency, and representatives of local territorial communities, held an online meeting to discuss the development of a draft Vinnytsia Regional Waste Management Plan (RWMP) through to 2035.
The event focused on clustering — the process of bringing together territorial communities around regional waste treatment facilities.
The discussion focused on the division of territorial communities into different clusters based on the distance from them to regional waste treatment facilities; the capacity of existing regional landfills, the possibility of extending their operation or expanding them, as well as accepting waste from other territorial communities in the cluster.
Oleksandr Ignatenko, national waste management expert for the WM4U programme, emphasized: “The participation of communities in such events is extremely important, because they are responsible for organizing household waste management. And it is the formation of clusters that will help scale projects, because it is not economically feasible for communities to build waste recovery and disposal facilities on their own. Only by working together with neighbouring communities we can achieve economically viable results”.
Inter-municipal cooperation is a step towards implementing tools that will ensure the long-term development of the region and an important element in creating a Regional Waste Management Plan, which will become the region’s strategic vision for the development of the sector.
The event was held within the Swedish–Ukrainian WM4U Programme, which aims to support the development of modern, systemic, and environmentally responsible waste management solutions at regional and local levels.
Vinnytsia is one of four WM4U pilot projects that will serve to test national reforms, demonstrating the benefits of improved municipal waste management.