WASTE MATERIALS Waste materials storage and disposal

Conditions for waste materials storage and disposal frequently do not meet current health requirements, and cause pollution of surface and ground water, soils and air.

 Most Ukrainian regions do not have any kind of areas for centralized waste materials storage and disposal. Conditions connected with dangerous waste materials allocation and recycling are not satisfactory. Dangerous wastes of the third and the fourth danger levels were mainly (66.6%) directed to surface storage in 1998, and approximately 5% (4.1 million tons) of the same waste materials appeared at areas of uncontrolled storage.

  According to the State Statistical Committee data 5.3 thousand tons of the first and the second danger levels wastes were transported to areas of uncontrolled storage and 15.4 thousand tons of the same wastes were transported to controlled storage which did not meet current standards.

 Ukrainian storage sites for pesticides that are obsolete and not allowed to be used in agricultural practice  (OP)  are considered as potential sources of dangerous impact.  13.5 thousand tons of such chemicals where accumulated in areas which are not appropriate for storage of such dangerous chemicals. Unsatisfactory conditions, long-term storage of OP, and low quality of containers and packing materials pose a  danger to the population and the environment, and the consequences of this situation are unpredictable.  

There are 109 centralized storage depots for obsolete pesticides and agrochemical storage and approximately 5,000 depots for herbicides at agricultural enterprises.

An inventory of the location of wastes revealed 2,760 sites. These are predominately sites of slime storage and landfills (approx. 700) of domestic and mixed waste products. The area occupied by the wastes in accumulators and moulds of enterprises is close to 31.5 thousand hectares.

 In 1998, 1.9% of the total amount of generated toxic wastes were destroyed, 66.7% were taken to organized surface storage (for example, 22.9% that did not meet the current standards), and 4.9% were transported to places of uncontrolled storage.

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