Imported Trash Recycling Plan Alarms Albania NGOs

NGOs say government pledges to monitor trash imports may help certain businesses but won't do much to safeguard the environment.

Besar Likmeta

Tirana

Xhemal Mato, head of Ekolëvizja, an umbrella group of environmental NGOs, told Balkan Insight that although every consignment of imported waste from abroad would require the Prime Minister’s signature, that did not make it safe.

Mato said certain businesses might benefit from the lucrative trade but it could prove disastrous for Albania’s environment.

In mid-October, Albania's Council of Ministers approved a decision to allow items of garbage on the so-called “green list” to be imported for recycling.

The "green list" is based on the 1992 Basel Convention on the movement and disposal of hazardous waste. It includes 55 types of rubbish, from agricultural discharge to metal, glass, leather and plastics.

The government says the move to import waste will support the country’s nascent recycling industry.

Defending the decision in a cabinet meeting in October, the Prime Minister, Sali Berisha, said that every shipment of waste would need a specific permit. “The import of any of these 55 products will require a specific government approval, based on the requirements of the recycling industry," he said.

A similar plan to import several million tons of Italian garbage for processing and incineration in 2004 sparked protests by a coalition of civil society groups and business owners.

The agreement with the Italian company and the plans for the incinerator were eventually dropped. However, the current government's decision is using the same legal framework approved in 2003 by the then Socialist Prime Minister Fatos Nano to control the shipments of waste.

Berisha’s Democratic Party at the time lashed out at Nano, accusing him of aiming to build the incinerator for personal profit. Now, the centre-right party maintains that imported waste will benefit Albania, and it has lashed out at those claiming otherwise.

Th protesters were "the anti-globalists, anarchists and Marxist-Leninists of today and they don’t represent the future,” Berisha said in cabinet of those protesting against his garbage plans. “They are the most dangerous enemies of the environment,” he added.