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Regional waste management centres submitted their applications to the Environmental Project Management Agency, specifying how the waste currently brought to the dumpsites is going to be sorted and recycled, as far back as in September. Within a couple of years capacities will be developed in ten regions that will not only solve the problem of smell of biodegradable substances, but will also enable recovery of secondary raw materials, as well as production of energy from volumes of waste, recyclingportal.eu reports.

"The main point of the decision taken by the Ministry is to coordinate two opposite objectives. On the one hand, EU funds are assigned and used only in order that Lithuania would be capable of waste management according to the high requirements of the EU, minimising the negative impact on the environment. On the other hand, it is important for the society, especially in these times of economic hardship, that waste management does not become an excessive burden, therefore, we particularly strictly monitor the compliance with the main requirement that the waste management costs of a family do not exceed 1 percent of its average annual income", the Minister of Environment Gediminas Kazlauskas says.

The support in the amount of LTL 450 million starts the second stage of development of the waste management system. The first stage, i.e. closing of the old dumpsites, opening of new ones, is successfully coming to the end. LTL 538 million (Euro 155m) was assigned and used for this purpose in 2000 – 2006, and the amount assigned from the EU and the national budget for the period of 2007 – 2013 and used for closing of the remaining old dumpsites, for building of sites for collection of waste of large dimensions and composting of green waste is equal to LTL 369 million (Euro 106m), writes LETA/ELTA.

These measures enabled compliance with the EU landfill directive – dumping of waste in the old dumpsites that do not meet the established requirements was stopped in July 2009, and during the last two years it was achieved that more than 90 percent of the population use the universal waste collection service (in 2006 it was only 60 percent).