FLASH
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The international stop with toxic waste that was blocked in Thailand and brought back to Albania draws attention to the way hazardous waste is managed in our country.
What you see is the official list of entities equipped with environmental permits for the transport of hazardous waste only in the period January-May 2024.
The list contains a total of 25 subjects and if we refer to the previous years, there are several hundred licenses. Officially, it is affirmed that in no case were they taken except the recently denounced Sokolaj entity: Referring to the "e-inspection" inspection system, apart from the entities sent in the previous email, no measures are found for entities transporting hazardous waste.
The international stop with toxic waste that was blocked in Thailand and brought back to Albania draws attention to the way hazardous waste is managed in our country. It should be clarified that toxic waste has strict transport specifications and rules from those that are simply classified as hazardous waste. In the case of the containers that were returned to Albania, it has not yet been clarified whether those hazardous wastes are toxic or not.
"The material was very dangerous and must be transported in the right way and with all the necessary safety conditions. None of these conditions were met and we immediately began to alert the countries that these two ships were headed to Thailand," said Jim Puckett, executive director of BAN.
Beyond that episode which, as we discovered, is repeated, an even greater concern is what happens to hazardous waste as a whole. An attempt to shed light on a hermetic field with the joint will of the institutions not to completely clarify the situation.
"Albania for waste management in general is in a big deficiency and this is due to the fact that it is an inherited backwardness. Even during these 30 years and more, there has been no attention to waste management in general' said Lavdosh Fertun, environmentalist.
"Waste production impacts not only the natural ecosystem, but also humans directly, as some of these wastes are dangerous for humans. Their production and management has received special attention, especially after the addition of hazardous waste' said Fredi Brahushi, environmental safety expert.
"I know that recently there was a request from Albania to send loads of waste to Saudi Arabia. We're looking at the entity there if it meets the conditions, but it doesn't seem that way at first glance," said Jim Puckett, BAN executive director.
The first question that comes naturally is how many tons of hazardous waste are emitted and does the state have traceability?
Experts say that if we take the declared tourism statistics for granted, they also affect the increase in the emission of hazardous waste in addition to urban waste.
In the official request addressed to the National Environment Agency, we received the official figure of these wastes that are in the state registers. Based on the register of Hazardous Waste Transfers for 2023, 48,131.3 tons of hazardous waste were transferred within our country in total.
Out of 953 waste code specifications in total, 418 of them are classified as hazardous waste. The amount of discharged waste varies from year to year in proportion to the final product produced./ InsideStory
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