Bucha brought in the Council of Europe to decide the fate of its rubbish for a decade

On Wednesday, 16 September, Bucha City Council announced that work had begun on a Local Waste Management Plan. The meeting was chaired by deputy mayor Dmytro Cheichuk. Around the table were council specialists, village heads (starostas), representatives of the companies MPP Rada, Kramar Eko and Dobryi Hospodar, and experts from the Council of Europe.

Photo: Bucha City Council

A document for a decade

The council describes the Local Waste Management Plan as a strategic planning document at the local level, designed for 10 years. The priorities voiced at the meeting were adopting the best European practices, building a modern recycling plant and generating energy, including biogas. The council says this is what should guarantee the community's environmental and infrastructure security.

Our task is to create not just a formal document, but a working plan that will set out a clear prospect for the development of the waste management system in the Bucha community for the next 10 years.

Dmytro CheichukDeputy Mayor of Bucha

Photo: Bucha City Council

What the law requires

Every territorial community must have such a plan: this is required by Article 52 of the law On Waste Management. The law gives one year to draw up a local plan, counted from the day the regional plan for the respective oblast enters into force. The local document must be aligned with the regional one, and the regional plan's targets are carried over into it as a matter of obligation. Once every two years, the local government must assess how effectively the plan is being implemented and publish the results on its website.

The Regional Waste Management Plan for Kyiv Oblast until 2034 was approved by the Kyiv Regional Military Administration in Order No. 801 of 1 May 2026. It is from its entry into force that the law counts the year given to Kyiv region's communities to prepare their local plans.

Kyiv region's landfills are on average about 80 percent full

The scale of the problem was discussed back on 11 June at a working meeting of the Kyiv Agglomeration association of local governments, held with the support of the Council of Europe Office in Ukraine. Andrii Stashkiv, deputy head of the Kyiv Regional Military Administration, said then that the average load of municipal solid waste landfills in Kyiv region had already reached about 80 percent. The regional plan takes a cluster approach: six clusters have been formed in the oblast, within which communities can implement joint infrastructure projects.

At that meeting Dmytro Cheichuk stressed the need to synchronise communities' local plans with the regional document, to strengthen inter-municipal coordination and to create workable financial incentives for communities willing to host waste management infrastructure, as well as to introduce a system for monitoring and evaluating projects.

Who was at the table

Among the participants of the Bucha meeting was the municipal enterprise Dobryi Hospodar, which took over waste collection, roads and street lighting in Bucha this summer, alongside the companies MPP Rada and Kramar Eko.

Photo: Bucha City Council

As a reminder, in August weekly collection of mixed household waste was restored in Bucha's private housing sector because of the heat and numerous requests from residents.