“Today the bottleneck is the waste incineration infrastructure, which is fixed in our national legislation. There are three power plants that burn waste, and when fires occur, some repairs, then that problematic issue arises. But I would not dramatize the situation,” Valdas Benkunskas told journalists on Monday after a meeting with the Speaker of the Seimas Juozas Olekas.
According to him, other regions could also store sorted waste prepared for incineration.
“If Vilnius is now temporarily storing sorted combustible waste and it will be incinerated sometime in winter, the same can be done in other regions. But this is no longer my concern, not my competence. There is the Ministry of Environment, there are other institutions that have to arrange those flows. Today in Vilnius we are managing, the waste sorting process is smooth,” the mayor added.
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V. Benkunskas emphasized that currently larger incineration capacities are needed for the Vilnius region as well.
“We need much larger capacities (incineration – BNS), because currently the entire current flow is being managed and incinerated and additionally waste accumulated over several years is taken from the (Vilnius mixed waste sorting – BNS) plant. If there was an opportunity to incinerate more, we would definitely take advantage of it. But there are already more technical, legal nuances, I do not know them and cannot comment precisely. In the near future, ‘Ignitis’ itself and the Ministry of Environment have to speak,” he said.
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