Separate waste collection as a privilege – Newspaper Kommersant No. 194 (7395) dated 10/19/2022

The Ministry of Natural Resources published on regulation.gov.ru a draft of new rules for the commercial accounting of municipal solid waste (MSW) – their previous version caused criticism from business and citizens due to the lack of a real opportunity for regional operators to pay for MSW removal in fact, and not according to the standard. The new version of the document, judging by the wording, will simplify this task for businesses, but still actually closes this possibility for residents of apartment buildings.

The draft government decree submitted for public discussion on amending the rules for commercial accounting of the volume and mass of MSW is designed to improve them based on the practice gained and in order to fulfill the White House plan to launch the separate accumulation and collection of such waste. The current version of the rules, which Kommersant has repeatedly written about, makes it virtually impossible for businesses and citizens to collect and remove MSW by actually accumulated rather than standard volumes – primarily due to the opposition of regional operators associated with local authorities and receiving financial benefits from the regulatory waste accounting. At the same time, the system deprives all players of incentives to reduce generation and separate collection of MSW – although these are the basic priorities of the national policy in the field of waste management.

The updated rules proposed by the ministry bring business, but not citizens, closer to the possibility of paying for waste management “after the fact”, experts interviewed by Kommersant say. The document contains more clearly formulated requirements for consumers for commercial accounting of MSW based on their actual volume. The rules, in particular, describe the method of calculation for different categories of consumers that generate MSW in multi-apartment and individual houses and non-residential premises, and the conditions, the presence of which allows you to choose among the available calculation methods the standard or actual volume of waste. “Unlike their current version, the updated document establishes the imperative of the will of the consumer for the reoperator,” notes Natalia Belyaeva, head of the Delphi law firm and member of the NTS of Rosprirodnadzor. “But only for consumers who generate MSW in non-residential premises and store them in containers, bunkers on a container site where no one else stores MSW.” Companies will be able to use this opportunity only if they take into account the waste generated at the enterprise, draw up an inventory report, a passport for MSW and “non-MSW” (so that you can talk about the volume of MSW, compare it with the volume / mass of what is in the container), use a separate container for MSW and an application form addressed to the reoperator on the application of the relevant formula of the rules, she notes.

For citizens, the regoperator may refuse to choose payment after the fact, if the regional authorities have not established and (or) do not apply the rules for the separate accumulation of MSW – including on the territory of the municipality, or if the choice of the owners of the house is not confirmed by the decision of their meeting. “In the draft resolution, segregation is carried out in relation to citizens and the corruption interest of the regional operators is traced. The state should involve citizens in the separate collection of waste, where one of the motivational mechanisms is the choice of payment method – according to the standard or after the fact, ”says Sodnom Budatarov from the IGSU RANEPA. Sergey Zavyalov, a member of the Business Russia industry committee and director of ECO Technopark LLC, notes that commercial accounting of any utility service is carried out either according to metering devices or according to standards, and the choice of method is the right of the consumer, and containers or packages, without which it is impossible to provide the service itself, in fact, are “MSW metering devices”. “Establishment or non-establishment, application or non-application of a separate fee does not affect the determination of the reliable volumes of the provision of municipal services for the treatment of MSW. The only reliable way to determine the volume of such a service is to measure it with a metering device (container),” he concludes, believing that “in some cases” the ministry’s arguments can even be seen as an attempt to mislead in order to receive payment for an unproven service – which in itself is illegal. .

Artem Chugunov