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Fund’s activities presented at the meeting of mayors and entrepreneurs

26.11.2021.

In a 2-day event, the 13th meeting of mayors and entrepreneurs entitled “48 Hours” held in Pula, the representatives of the Fund presented their activities in the field of waste management.

This is a unique meeting that focuses on the developmental role of the towns, their appeal for investments, and enhancing their competitiveness. Good practice examples were presented from towns in Croatia and abroad that integrated entrepreneurial environment in the ongoing sustainable development.

The director of the Fund, Siniša Kukić, with the team of his colleagues from the Fund, also attended the meeting of mayors and entrepreneurs. The cooperation of the Fund with the towns and local self-government in implementing projects is highly important due to the growing needs. Events like this are one of the ways to reinforce this cooperation, which is beneficial for the citizens. 

In her presentation about the procurement of containers for separate waste collection that was co-financed from EU funds, the head of the Environmental Protection Sector at the Fund, Aleksandra Čilić, pointed out the importance of containers for the separate waste collection. “During 2020, almost 1.7 tonnes of mixed municipal waste were collected in Croatia, or 6.5% less than in the previous year, 41% of waste was separated, and the rate of recycling was 34%, bearing in mind that    one of the key goals of this project is to achieve the rate of 50%. Until the beginning of the summer season, we had distributed to the towns and municipalities more than 2.1 million containers for bio-waste, paper, plastics, glass, and recyclable waste. Now, when almost each and every household has or will have containers in which they can separately dispose of the waste, there will be no excuse to not do so. We can hardly wait to see the first results now that the necessary infrastructure has been provided.”  

Under the project that is worth in total 370 million kunas, 407 towns and municipalities received containers for the households, that were purchased and distributed through the Environmental Protection and Energy Efficiency Fund. The Fund withdrew the main part of this amount from EU funds through the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development.

In the round table discussion entitled “Together to sustainability”, the head of the Sector for special categories of waste Zvonimir Majić talked about the deposit system, its structure, and its role in the sustainability scheme. “In Croatia the deposit system has been in place for 115 years, and it covers beverage packaging in single use PET, Al/Fe and glass packaging with a volume of 0.2 l and larger. This system is also advocated by Europe as it has excellent results, which is corroborated by Croatia’s example. The system organised in this way ensures the high collection rate, as well as high-quality raw material that can be used in further production. We are aware that in certain  aspects the system needs improvement, by this I mean it needs to be automatised to the greatest possible extent so that the shops would no longer need to accept and count the packaging manually, but RVMs would be used. This would also streamline the cots,” explained Majić.

As the deposit system has excellent results, the collection rate is more than 85%, and in 2021 it was extended to include the beverages with the value of 0.2 l as well as milk and liquid dairy products.
 
Another panel at the conference was held on the topic of “Waste-to-Energy – The power of waste in the 21st century”, and one of the participants was the head of the Sector for EU Funds Maja Feketić. “There are two waste management centres in Croatia, and in the upcoming period nine more should be built. However, we should not rule out the options that include RDF technologies,” said Feketić, adding that there were numerous examples of waste-to-energy power plants in Europe.

The “48 Hours” conference is traditionally organised by the business weekly Lider in cooperation with the Association of Towns, and it took place over two days in the Park Plaza Histria Hotel.