Composting for a Cleaner Bulgaria
The Bulgarian government has passed new legislation making widely used, improvised dumpsites at village outskirts illegal. Local governments have been charged with finding new ways to collect and dispose of household waste.
The USAID-funded CityLinks program implemented by the International City Management Association (ICMA) joined forces with the Bulgarian Foundation for Local Government Reform (FLGR) to address waste management practices in Bulgaria. Analysis by ICMA staff revealed that more than 98 percent of the household waste deposited in village dumpsites was organic, which made composting an obvious solution.
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| Composting site near a Bulgarian village |
The ICMA program identified the need for regional landfills and local waste reduction strategies, focusing on 18 villages for a four-year period. The municipalities built composting sites where there had once been dumpsites, purchased household waste containers for inorganic waste, and asked residents to separate the organic waste from their gardens. Pamphosting and how it enriches soils.
The program has been a huge success, reducing the amount of waste going into municipalities’ landfills, increasing the efficiency of waste management operations, and providing fertilizer to enrich gardens and farms in the regions. The program was designed to provide training and technical advice that can be distributed through other networks within the country after ICMA involvement is completed. A training session conducted each year for 30-40 environmental officials from throughout Bulgaria is used to plets were published and meetings held to emphasize the benefits of comprovide technical training and to select other municipalities to receive funding.
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