OREANDA-NEWS  Separate collection of household garbage at the end of the year was available to 48.4% of the Russian population, said the head of the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation Alexander Kozlov.

"By the end of 2022, separate waste collection is already available to almost half of the population - 48.4%. And this is despite the fact that the "garbage" reform has been going on in Russia for only the fourth year. No one has been engaged in it since Soviet times," the minister said in an interview with the Izvestia newspaper. "And it's not just to put tanks and hang signs. This is a huge normative work - new approaches to the regulation of medical, biological, and radioactive waste, to adjust the requirements for products containing secondary raw materials. To build capacities for sorting and recycling of garbage, to form logistics chains. And all this should work comprehensively," he added. Kozlov also recalled that last year the financing of the regional subsidy for the purchase of containers for separate garbage collection was increased to 1.5 billion rubles from 1 billion.

The "garbage" reform began in Russia on January 1, 2019. The program of updating the waste management system is included in the national project "Ecology". According to the indicators of the national project, 36% of household garbage will have to be sent for recycling by 2024 instead of 7% in 2019. The goal by 2030 is to sort 100% of the volume of so-called municipal solid waste (MSW) and reduce by 50% such waste that is sent to landfills.