Composting – Green PR or real change

A few days ago, the Sofia Municipality announced that it would distribute 4,650 free plastic compost bins with an impressive volume of 740 liters. So far, over 14,000 households in Sofia have already benefited from the program. At first glance, the "Compost at Home" initiative, which is being organized for the 11th time in a row, seems like a well-established environmental tradition in the modern city management. But if we look beneath the surface, the campaign reveals both its enormous potential and the deep systemic defects in Sofia's waste management. We spoke to Danita Zarichinova, an expert in the "Zero Waste" team of "For the Earth" Association, on the topic.

"People who have been separating recyclable waste for years are starting to realize how much biodegradable waste there is and are gradually wanting to find a solution. That's why I think a large part of them are interested. Including those who don't have a yard for home composting. This is a well-forgotten old practice, it's not something new, we just call it a composter now. That's why I can't say definitively, but there needs to be a lot more information from municipalities on how everyone can compost."

Comparing the number of composters with the number of residents in the city of two million, the numbers don't add up. At this rate, Sofia will never meet the EU's goal of reducing food waste by 50% by 2029. There has also been sharp criticism on social media that the distribution of cheap plastic boxes (instead of building natural wooden systems) is simply a way to absorb money from environmental programs. The argument is that many citizens receive the containers, but due to a lack of basic training, they turn them into ordinary trash cans, which start to smell after a year and are abandoned.

"In Sofia we also have a composting installation, where such waste from parks and gardens goes, but there is still no system in place for households, which is something very important. Biodegradable waste is also the heaviest, as it contains a lot of water. And if we find a way to deal with it, and in a very useful way for the soil, we will realize that the compost that is created is extremely fertile. It is in the hands of the municipalities to motivate people to compost more. In Bulgaria, the municipality of Gabrovo has brown containers and actively encourages people to separate this type of waste."

It is precisely because food waste weighs so much that municipalities pay millions of euros per ton to collect, transport and dispose of it in landfills. If this waste is processed in the yard, waste collection costs drop sharply.  

"In Bulgaria, for example, it happened that many municipalities invested in large composting facilities, so large in capacity that they had to collect biodegradable waste from the entire municipality in order to fill the capacity. Instead of motivating people to do it in their yard, they had to use trucks, to have containers placed, and costs were created. And in fact, it is such a natural process that it can be carried out even in higher residential buildings."

In conclusion, the "Compost at Home" campaign is a step in the right direction, but it is timid. Until the Sofia Municipality stops viewing ecology as a once-a-year PR campaign and introduces mass solutions accessible to every Sofia resident, the city will continue to bury millions of euros in its landfills instead of turning them into a resource.