Sochi residents complain about garbage dumps

In Sochi, container areas for collecting household waste are littered with garbage. This was claimed by residents and guests of the city. The "Spetsavtokhozyaistvo" utility services company does not manage to take out the garbage because of the overpopulation of the city. The problem is aggravated by the lack of a system for primary processing and separated waste collecting.

"All garbage ... is transported in trucks to other regions of the country at a distance of 300-500 km, and the regions already refuse to take unsorted garbage from Sochi," the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent was told by Galina, a dispatch operator of the "Spetsavtokhozyaistvo".

"The city has been cleaned for the celebration of the Day of Russia. However, it is terrible to imagine what will happen then. There is nowhere to take out the garbage, and there is nowhere to store it in Sochi," said Vladimir Kuznetsov, a driver of the garbage truck.

"A former building materials plant located on the right bank of the Sochi River in a residential area is littered with garbage... The ecological situation in our earlier clean area is spoiled. The bad smell already penetrates into apartments," complains Svetlana Mosyakina, a resident of the residential micro-district.

Officials from the City Mayor's Office believe that a regional operator will cope with the problem of processing and transporting garbage. However, till present, the plant and two garbage-processing sites in Sochi have not been put into operation, reports Yuri Palamarchuk, Deputy City Mayor in charge for housing and communal services.

In Sochi, it is necessary to organize separate collection of waste and waste processing, believes Nikolai Kulikov, PhD in Technical Sciences, a laureate of the Russian Federation Prizes for Science and Technology for 2016. According to him, otherwise, the city "will face an ecological disaster."

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.