A festive event was held on the Pirot Warriors Square earlier todyay to promote the “O-dva-ja-mo” project, organized by the City of Pirot, PUK “Regional landfill Pirot” and JP “Komunalac”.
The city of Pirot started with the implementation of the household waste separation project, “O-DVA-JA-MO”, which was initiated by the Ministry of Environmental Protection of the Republic of Serbia, with the support of the European Union and the Kingdom of Sweden. The project aims to establish a system for waste separation at the point of origin in 17 municipalities of Serbia by investing in equipment and informing citizens about the advantages of separating household waste, for its later successful recycling and reducing the amount of waste that ends up in landfills.
On this occasion, and in order to raise the awareness of our citizens about the importance of life protection through the primary separation of waste for recycling, the City of Pirot, in cooperation with JP “Komunalac”, organized a competition for our youngest. It is about the collection of PET packaging that took place in all four elementary schools: Sveti Sava elementary school, Vuk Karadžić elementary school, September 8th elementary school, Dušan Radović elementary school, as well as in the “Čika Jova Zmaj” preschool. At the festive event that took place, prizes were awarded to all participants, and the organizers of the event expressed their satisfaction at the interest of citizens to be informed and contribute to the preservation of the environment.
The program manager for the environment and climate action in the European Union Delegation to Serbia, Antoine Avignon, also spoke about the project, and pointed out on this occasion:
“We left Belgrade this morning for Pirot because Pirot is one of the first cities where the European Union started with investments when we talk about waste management. And that was possible because we have a good team here – in the municipality, in the city utility company and in the regional center for waste management. Ten years ago, the European Union began to invest in a regional center for waste management here in Pirot, and now we have a new project for the primary separation of waste at source ( the point of origin), which is implemented in 17 municipalities in Serbia and whose total value is around 8 million euros. This project is being implemented to reduce pollution on the one hand and increase the recycling rate on the other.”
The mayor of Pirot, M.Sc Vladan Vasić, pointed out that Pirot wants to be a European city in every sense of the word.
“Once upon a time when we started working to establish a regional landfill, people thought it was just a place where we wanted to dump waste.” Now everyone knows that it is not only a place where waste is dumped, but it should also be sorted and recycled. Our goal is that as little waste as possible ends up in the landfill. The children are the most important to us because they will promote those European values and they will behave responsibly tomorrow. Thanks to the people from the Landfill who dedicatedly worked on it, but also to the donors from the EU, the Kingdom of Sweden. We also have trucks, so now the circular economy and recycling is practically created from the point of origin of waste. Thanks also to the schools that teach children to behave in an environmentally responsible manner, and to the kindergartens, because those children will grow up to be people who will do waste sorting,” Vasić said.
Director of the Pirot Regional Landfill, Nebojša Ivanov, thanked the City of Pirot, Mayor Vasić and the donors who enabled the realization of this very important project.
“When we talk about this project, about 1,360,000 euros were invested. The biggest donors are the European Union, the Kingdom of Sweden, the Ministry of Environmental Protection and normally, the City of Pirot and the municipalities of Babušnica, Dimitrovgrad and Bela Palanka also participate. We received six new trucks whose value is extremely high, about 15,600 240-liter buckets, blue, for recycling, yellow and blue containers. The current market value of everything is around two million euros,” said director Ivanov. He also announced new projects.
The domestic waste separation project “Odvajamo” takes place in 17 municipalities in Serbia, which will improve their waste management system through this project, and through the investments of the European Union, the Embassy of Sweden and the Ministry of Environmental Protection, 26 waste collection vehicles, over 90,000 bins and containers, as well as public opinion research and public information campaigns. The communication campaign and technical support for the Household Waste Separation Project is carried out by Pomilio Blum, in cooperation with the local partner New Moment New Ideas Company.
