A draft law that is set to amend a whole range of waste management laws has been registered on the website of the Verkhovna Rada. The authors stress that this is important to prepare for the introduction of extended producer responsibility and to resolve several practical aspects of implementing the Law "On Waste Management", from managing demolition waste to meeting targets.
EcoPolitic has analysed the draft law and outlines the key changes.
This is Draft Law No. 16214 "On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine in the Field of Waste Management". It was initiated by MPs Oleh Bondarenko, who chairs the parliamentary Committee on Environmental Policy, Olena Kryvoruchkina, the committee's deputy chair, Serhii Mandzii and Viktor Chornyi. The document was registered on 4 November and has been submitted to the relevant committee for review since 6 November.
The Law "On Waste Management" came into force back on 9 July 2023, but other documents need to be amended for its requirements to be implemented effectively in practice. According to the explanatory note, adoption of Draft Law No. 16214 would resolve the following waste management issues:
1. Creating a general regulatory framework for extended producer responsibility (EPR) schemes. The document will lay the groundwork for finalising and drafting special laws on managing individual waste streams.
2. Clarifying the terminology of current legislation and aligning existing legislative acts with each other.
3. Resolving practical issues in applying the Law "On Waste Management". These are the nuances identified during consultations on drafting legislation on packaging and packaging waste. Among them:
- defining the term "biowaste";
- defining waste from the demolition of buildings and structures, as well as regulating its management;
- the right to appoint the administrator of household waste management services and its legal status, taking into account the ongoing corporate law reforms;
- the real impossibility of meeting household waste management targets amid the full-scale invasion;
- the need to improve permitting procedures in line with the requirements of the Law "On Administrative Procedure".
The comparative table contains 110 pages of amendments to current documents. The lion's share concerns changes to the Law "On Waste Management": almost 90 pages of not only targeted corrections but also new, expanded articles. In addition to updating terminology, the amendments clarify, in particular:
- the criteria for end-of-waste status and the procedure for it;
- a number of aspects of EPR implementation, including the structure of the system, the basic principles for fulfilling producer obligations, transparency of information, and the rights and obligations of the EPR organisation;
- the responsibilities of central and regional authorities, in particular regarding decisions on end-of-waste status, drawing up demolition waste management plans, and detecting and eliminating unauthorised dumpsites;
- requirements for landfilling waste;
- permitting procedures in the field of waste management;
- deadlines for meeting targets.
Recently, the government announced simplified rules for companies operating in the waste management sector. In particular, landfill monitoring programmes will have to be updated less frequently, and transboundary shipments of waste will be simplified.
The Ministry of Economy, Environment and Agriculture also published an analysis of the effectiveness of the government experiment that for two years allowed companies to treat waste under a simplified procedure. It turned out that only 10% used this period to start or complete the environmental impact assessment (EIA) procedure, and the volume of waste is difficult to estimate due to the lack of full reporting.
