Author: Bleona Zela
Despite repeated promises and expensive contracts, Durrës continues to face major problems in urban waste management, causing dissatisfaction among residents, businesses and tourists.
As you leave and decide to spend an afternoon in the tourist town of Durrës, among the things that catch your eye from the landscape that this city has to offer are the urban wastes.
Although the Mayor of Durrës, Emirjana Sako, since 2021 promised the residents of the coastal city that the waste would be deposited in Landfill approved, as well as every technical and legal means would be used to remove waste from the city, even after concluding a large contract with landfill of Kashar, the situation continues to remain the same.
The generation of waste and the lack of implementation of a proper plan by the municipality causes this issue to turn into chaos, especially in the summer season, when it is the peak of tourism for this city.
Residents and businesses express dissatisfaction with the management of the municipality, where their problems start from non-compliance with waste collection on schedule by the municipality and up to the hygiene of bins and the environment where waste is collected.
Elvira, who has been living for 20 years in Poplar area in Durrës, says that the municipality is not regular in meeting on schedule, there is a lack of bins, but even those that are, are old, fallen and smell bad.
"They are not cleaned, as long as I have been a resident of this neighborhood. The bins have not been changed for a long time," she says.
A citizen, around 50, in the area of Dajlan Bridge, says: "The municipality should look at our neighborhoods more often. We are never informed about the waste, only in cases where they do activities for their benefits or for their campaigns".
Meanwhile, one of the business managers in this area says that the culminating point comes in the summer season.
"We are often forced to send the collected waste to the collection points or to the designated bins ourselves, since the municipality is not correct in coming and taking them."
According to the waste management expert for Albania, Kosovo and developing countries, Lulzim Baumann, the main factor of this problem comes as a result of the basic management that the municipalities offer.
"Waste management throughout Albania continues to remain one of the biggest challenges. Still over 10% of the waste is illegally dumped in nature, burned or thrown into rivers, ending up in the sea. In the case of Durrës, which is one of the largest cities in Albania, but also a point of attraction for tourists, where the amount of waste is in tons, I look at the municipality as the main responsible," he says.
"If the appropriate measures are not taken, we will again be in the chaos we are in today, where in 2024 the municipalities still do not have a proper management plan", says Ornela Çuçi, environmental expert.
Old plans, old problems
The municipality of Durrës in Waste Management Plan of the city had planned for the period 2010-2025 that the city needs a disposal capacity for 2,1 million tons of solid, municipal waste and that during the next 20 years it had decided to switch to recycling, reducing the amount of waste for disposal.
Also, the municipality had planned a landfills sanitary (no treatment), and a mechanical, biological treatment (landfill with TMB), as well as the establishment of a landfill young, dedicated. But, after the declaration of emergency, all waste continues to be sent to landfill of Sharra, Tirana at a high cost for citizens, a cost that is often even higher than waste disposal in many EU cities.
On June 24, 2020, the mayor of the Municipality of Durrës, Emirjana Sako, in a statement to the media said that a detailed analysis of waste management in the city will be carried out.
After the announcement of the environmental emergency in Durrës, the municipality seems to have found a provisional, but now long-lasting, solution for waste disposal: the conclusion of a 6-month contract with the Sharra concessionaire, but its details have not been made public. However, according to the concessionaire's own prices, it will cost the Municipality of Durrës about 260 thousand euros per month to deposit waste in Sharre, considering that it produces over 100 thousand tons of waste per year.
After a tendering procedure without competition and with prior negotiation, on 08.10.2021, the Municipality of Durrës connects contract of the urban waste disposal service with the company Integrated Energy BV SPV, with a total value of 1,351,242,240.00 ALL.
From the settled bills of the urban waste disposal service of the Municipality of Durrës near landfill of Sharra, it is observed that, only for the year 2023, the amount paid for this service has cost the city 277,463,118 ALL. 226,342,085 lek are added to this amount, which go to the payment of salaries and insurance of the staff of the collection and transport service of urban waste and for other expenses.
Although everything looks fine on paper, an audit carried out by KLSH (High State Control) in 2023 found that the municipality, as the contracting authority, did not carry out any verification of the amount of urban waste, deposited near landfill of Sharra, but was satisfied with the financial invoices issued by the concessionaire, thus raising the possibility of creating an economic damage.
Despite the large expenses for the city's cleaning service, during conversations with some citizens and businessmen in different neighborhoods of the Durrës area on the waste management situation, they express that they are dissatisfied with the municipality, especially during the tourist season, when the population of the city multiplies,
"During the summer, there is a lot of garbage, as passers-by or tourists use the neighborhood bins to throw their garbage and in these cases the bins are full and the municipality should come more often in such cases or add more bins, but this is also a problem , as the roads are narrow", said a resident of the area Dajlan Bridge.
Also, another problem encountered by the residents of the city of Durrës is the dirtiness of the bins or the bad smell, which comes as a result of the accumulation of waste for a long time.
"Garbage collection should be more frequent, or during garbage collection, the bins should be cleaned or disinfected, as the smell of the bin creates a lot of discomfort, when we pass by with bags of food with us or taking children to school", - says a concerned resident of the neighborhood Adria Street.
While businesses say that they still need the municipality to collect garbage more often during the tourist season.
"We have very little support from the municipality, often in the case of waste we are forced to send the collected waste ourselves to the collection points or to the designated bins, since we produce in large quantities and the municipality is not correct in coming and ``took them,'' says the manager of a nearby business Dyrrah Boulevard.
But, this neglect can also create the conditions for various infectious diseases.
Doctor Pipero says that, due to environmental pollution, we are exposed to diseases, from contagious ones to dangerous diseases.
"Environmental pollution, such as air, water, soil, is related to humans and can transmit deadly diseases. Environmental and air pollution can infect us with viruses, such as flu, measles and many infectious diseases. Some related diseases are cancer, heart disease, lung disease, asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia.”
While residents don't yet have a proper waste management tax, they do pay the green tax 150 ALL per month. Businesses, on the other hand, have an annual fee for cleaning and removing waste from the business, which is about 5,000 ALL per year.
The problems of urban waste are numerous, not only in the main areas of the city, such as the area of Dajlan Bridge and Beach area, but peripheral areas, like that of the swamp, are even more affected by this problem.
Businesses in these areas say the taxes are too high compared to the service they receive.
What appears is the lack of bins and businesses that generate large amounts of waste are forced to send them several kilometers away to collection points.
Asked about this problem, Mr. Bardhi, a resident of the area for more than 30 years, says he has never been asked about this problem before. Garbage collection is done at the discretion of the municipality and there is no specific day.
"They either come or they don't come, as they please."
In the rural areas of Durrës, residents express the lack of bins as the main problem.
"They should put as many bins as possible, they come and remove them and we are all forced to throw the waste into a single bin!", - says a resident of the area.
But what can be done?
Ornela Çuçi, environmental expert, sees the establishment of a fee as a solution: "The city cleaning service, waste cleaning or the entire integrated waste management system should function as a fee in every municipality, just like we pay for the lights or the water. This is not a tax, it is a fee, which must be set for each citizen, calculated in the VKM of the fee costs. Very few of the municipalities implement this VKM, so the municipalities are always left without income to exercise this function."
While the waste management expert, Lulzim Baumann, suggests that the first step is to separate the waste at home.
"The best practice is to separate waste at source. When the waste is separated at the source, we have recyclable materials to use again. Another best practice, based on the waste hierarchy, is normally waste reduction. Experts say that the best waste is the waste that is not produced at all", he says.
The Municipality of Durrës should cooperate with the Ministry of Environment for the reduction of waste, where as an example we can take the non-production of single-use bags or the non-production of different materials, which can be used for repair", says Baumann.
While there is a draft law in the Parliament for changes in Law on Integrated Waste Management, until the date of publication of this article, the Municipality of Durrës still does not have a long-term plan for the management of the city's waste, beyond that of depositing it in landfill of Sharra, and has not yet provided any comments regarding the design or implementation of an updated plan.
This article is part of the Investigative Journalism Laboratory project, which is financially supported by the Public Relations Office of the US Embassy in Tirana. The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Department of State.
