The fire recently in Karaburma is the fourth accident with industrial waste in the last two years, which is a message that the system of state control and issuing environmental permits for the treatment of such waste must be redesigned, the head of the PKS Circular Economy Center Sinisa Mitrovic told Tanjug.
Earlier accidents of this type were in Sabac, Paracin and around Belgrade, he notes and adds that accidents also happen in larger economies, but the solutions that come after there strengthen the resilience of that business sector.
The Serbian Chamber of Commerce is very carefully creating a database, and recommendations and solutions that are needed by both the business sector and the state to improve the situation. It is necessary to have a multisectoral approach, because it is not only a problem of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, but also the Ministry of the Interior, and local self-governments, he notes.
He adds that in Serbia, for 20 years, no national consensus has been found on the sites where hazardous or industrial waste will be treated.
You can’t wait another time, and another administration. We must be a very brave and responsible state, set solutions and thus have full control over the system, he appeals.
He states that now the sites where waste is treated are mostly in factories in bankruptcy, abandoned industries from the socialist era.
The problem is that now the settlements have reached those factories that were created in the 50s and 60s of the last century, and now we have situations where waste is really treated in urban zones, such as this one last night in the Trudbenik zone, in the municipality of Palilula.
The state should also be responsible to the business sector, and to say where locations can be set up, he says, adding that this would avoid major accidents.
Nikolic explains that as a community, we cannot have GDP growth, domestic and foreign investments, if we do not know what we will do with waste.
We can’t play a game in which we will constantly get goals, lose on the field and have accidents like this – we have to establish a predictable situation, he says.
As the first step of change, he sees the introduction of large bank insurance guarantees that would have to be possessed by an operator dealing with hazardous waste.
That job cannot be done with insufficient quality technology and equipment, even in abandoned factories in bankruptcy, he says.
Raising insurance should be accompanied by a new quality permit and a digitalized process of monitoring the entire hazardous waste treatment system.
He adds that citizens must also be informed why it is good for Serbia to have controlled points for hazardous waste management.
We will be in difficulties, because we will not be able to treat waste in EU countries. Their capacities are for their economies. And there is no economy in Serbia that will pay for the treatment of a kilogram of hazardous waste three or four euros plus transport through EU countries, he believes.
He adds that the last moment is to make a turn in Serbia and build infrastructure for the treatment of hazardous and industrial waste, because there could be an accident due to climate change and floods and earthquakes.
PKS will introduce it as part of a new package, a new state administration in Serbia. We will suggest that they be much braver, more engaged on the field, and that they have ready-made solutions, he said.
Mitrovic reminds that there are about ninety identified abandoned locations in Serbia with historically generalized waste that should be removed and stored.
We need to embark on the process bravely and enterprisingly, otherwise we will have serious problems, he says.
For the technological processes that treat waste, he adds, there must be new buildings built to high standards when it comes to earthquakes, fires and other natural disasters.
At the moment, I do not see that there are locations in the spatial plan of Serbia where industrial waste treatment plants will be built. Because as soon as a location is determined, we immediately have a popular uprising, he says and adds that it should be explained to the citizens that those plants are not a problem.
He adds that Serbia generates over 80,000 tons of industrial waste a year, and raises the question of whether anyone wonders what happens if it ends up in an inadequate way.
These are all merged courts. If you have poor quality waste management, it endangers the environment and health, he concludes, Dnevnik reports.
