This was a saying of my grandmother many years ago in England. Now Romania with the help of the EU is catching up on this idea. Waste management has been an important part of a new industry in Romania since 1989. Last week a further step in waste management was taken which will affected the population.
Parliament last week adopted a new law in Romania concerning the sorting of Waste. The proposed law will be sent to the President for signature and he is supposed to sign it within 10 days of receipt or send it back with his comments. At the present time there is no indication that he will not sign the Law.
The intention of the Law which is proposed to come into force in 2015 is to increase the amount of presorted waste and thereby solve pollution issues and improve the environment. This Law is aimed not at the collectors but at those persons who produce waste; that is factories and households. Failure to observe the terms of the law will mean that the producers of waste face fines and other penalties. For Romanian lawyers this will provide additional work on advising both companies and owners of developments as to how they can ensure that waste is collected correctly and thereby prevent fines being levied on the owners of developments.
The new law follows in the main EU Directive 2008/98/CE which was intended to minimize the impact of the disposal of waste on the population at large and thereby reduce the need for land fill and other methods of the disposal of waste.
The Law requires that waste be divided at the point of collection. The waste will have to be separated into paper, metal, plastic and glass. There is no separate class of waste for general household waste but as it is required that the specific waste is treated separately there will have to be sorting of general waste as well.
The Law means that the householder will have to have separated the waste prior to its collection by the waste management companies. This will incur households with additional expenses as they will have to keep the waste separate until collection. It will be interesting to see how this is implemented in reality as many households are in blocks of flats which have a common chute for delivering household waste to main collection point in the block.
The effect of the law will depend on implementation and enforcement. Only if the Government can convince the population at large will it have an immediate impact. Steps are already being taken in public areas such as Malls where there are already separate bins for the different types of waste.
The new provisions will raise the cost of waste collection which will be borne by the public as there will have to be different collections for each type of waste. The Law will benefit the collectors of waste as an initial sorting should already have taken place. It means that the landfills will become more ecological and that the re-cycling of waste will in itself become a further business opportunity in Romania as it is in other countries. As an international Romanian law firm we have already advised international companies on the increased opportunities available to foreign investors and these opportunities will continue.
The net result will be that by the implementation of the law the general populous will be the major benefactors of this law and EU initiative.