The Ministry of Environment issues permits contrary to the law "On waste management" – an expert

The Ministry of Environment issues permits contrary to the law "On waste management" – an expert shutterstock
Katerina Belousova

The new regulation on obtaining permits and the list of waste have not yet been approved

Oleksandr Lymar, an expert on waste management at the Ukrainian Institute of the Future, said that the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources issues permits that do not comply with Law No. 2320-IX "On Waste Management".

In the UkraineWasteRecycling Facebook community, he suggested that the Ministry of Environment was using it according to the old law when issuing permits for transboundary transportation of waste.

Lymar emphasized that the law "On waste management" stipulates that in order to obtain a permit, entrepreneurs must provide:

  • confirmation of the presence of a permit to carry out waste management operations in relation to waste;
  • names and codes, composition of waste according to the National list of waste.

"Currently, the resolution on obtaining permits has not yet been approved (that is, permits do not yet exist) and the list of waste has not been approved," he explained, adding that the Ministry of Environment has already issued more than 100 "transcordons" for the import and export of waste.

The expert noted that the grounds for making a decision on refusal to provide written consent (notification) for cross-border transportation of hazardous waste are:

  • the submission of the necessary documents is not complete;
  • their non-compliance with the requirements established by law.

"But this does not prevent the Ministry of Environment from issuing a transcordon," Lymar stressed.

"Similar judicial practice was, by the way, also in the part of environmental protection legislation, that there was a need to obtain a permit, but the order was never adopted. And the business entity in this case is right, as the court noted," commented the coordinator of the Committee for Industrial Ecology and Sustainable development of the European Business Association Olha Boyko.

In the discussion of the post, expert in the field of waste management Yevhen Shmurak stated that in the near future all provisions of the Law and by-laws containing elements of the National List of Waste will be implemented in clear violation of the legislation.

Earlier, EcoPolitic wrote, that on July 9, the European integration Law No. 2320-IX "On Waste Management" entered into force in Ukraine, which launches the garbage reform. The document is a framework, so it requires the adoption of a number of additional acts, most of which are still in the development stages.

As EcoPolitic previously reported, the management of the Ukrainian Association of Secondary Metals turned to the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources to clarify legislative inconsistency regarding scrap. The agency provided response.

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