site.btaSofia Municipality to Conduct Survey on Improving Separate Waste Collection

Sofia Municipality is seeking people's opinions on improving separate waste collection with the help of a survey, Sofia Mayor Vassil Terziev said on Facebook on Tuesday. He emphasized that this way it will be possible to assess how well the services provided meet the needs of Sofia residents, adding that filling out the survey will only take between 3 and 5 minutes.

"Sofia's cost for 1 ton of waste is approximately BGN 400, which includes collection from gray containers, transportation, processing, recovery and disposal, with about 30,000 tons of such waste generated every month," Terziev noted. He pointed out that it is important that as little waste as possible ends up in gray containers, and that reducing it by even 10% will save millions every year, which can go to other important projects.

Terziev also stated that one way to reduce waste costs is to improve the separate collection system at the source, which is the reason for Sofia Municipality to ask residents if recycling containers are close enough to their homes, if they use them, if they serviced regularly and if it is right to impose fines on residents for throwing recyclable packaging into gray containers for mixed household waste.

He recalled that the responsibility for recycling recyclable waste lies with packaging recovery organisations, which are the ones with the coloured containers. "They receive money from manufacturers of packaged products and are tasked with collecting end-of-life packaging and recycling it. We pay for this in the price of these products and we need to receive a convenient and effective service that helps us separate as much of the packaging as possible from the general waste, so that we do not have to pay once again when it ends up in the gray containers," Terziev stressed.

On July 11, Terziev said that nearly BGN 5 million in costs were saved and nearly BGN 1 million in revenue was added from improved municipal waste management in the first six months of 2025. The results are thanks to the reform and ongoing efforts to optimize processes at the Sofia Waste Treatment Plant, he pointed out, adding that revenues from the sale of recyclable waste have increased more than fivefold.