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The Ministry of Environment Protection of Ukraine estimates amount of all kinds of refuse concentrated in Ukraine at 35 billion tons The Ministry of Environment Protection of Ukraine estimates amount of all kinds of refuse concentrated in Ukraine at 35 billion tons, Oleksandr Sokolov, the director of the Environment Ministry's department of ecological safety, told 5 Channel on September 3.

He specifies, of these 35 billion tons about 2.6 billion tons are highly toxic.

"We now possess full information about all kinds of waste in Ukraine. We have thirty-five billion tons of waste, moreover, two point six billion tons are highly toxic," he said.

According to information from the ministry, every year the total volume of household refuse in Ukraine increases by about 50 million cubic metres, and of industrial waste by 175 million cubic metres.

"What is that? This is half of the Borodianka district of Kyiv region. We have to take measures to stop accumulation of waste that ruin our land, and then the next stage, we have to destroy all those refuse that were piling up in the previous decades," Sokolov defined the Environment Ministry's problem.

In particular, the official notes, the ministry is studying possibility of building eight tyre-recycling plants in Ukraine.

"[Every year] we heap twelve and a half million car tyres. Ukraine has not a single technology to recover hundred percent. We say we are buying [for] eight regions of Ukraine technologies absolutely harmless for the environment that recover almost ninety-five percent of this kind of refuse and settle this problem," the Environment Ministry executive said.

Each of these plants will be recycling tyres from the three nearby provinces, he added.

Apart from this, Sokolov says the Environment Ministry has plans for 2011 to start reclaiming hazardous waste in Ukraine instead of taking them abroad for recycling; in the ministry's opinion this will allow saving a great deal of means.

The ministry has already held talks with a governor, he said on top.

"We have determined, within four months we have to do all the work for processing documents and then, maximum in half a year, to bring the fifth generation technology, the latest one, which will destroy the most hazardous refuse and not producing any harmful emissions into the air," Sokolov said.

The Environment Ministry estimates that all-in-all costs of recycling one ton of refuse abroad makes UAH 23,000 or UAH 24,000.

As Ukrainian News earlier reported, the Verkhovna Rada on January 21 increased fines for violating the rules of handling refuse during collection, transportation, storage, processing, recycling, deactivation, and burial of waste by between 19 and 50 times to between 50 and 150 personal exemptions.