site.btaSofia Residents Unite to Tackle City's Waste Crisis

Citizens across Sofia are stepping in to help manage the waste crisis in the Krasno Selo and Lyulin districts after the contract with the waste collection company expired.

Mayor Vasil Terziev rejected an offer from the company that exceeded the forecast price of BGN 200 per tonne by more than three times. “We will not pay a protection racket fee,” the Mayor declared on October 5 and introduced a temporary two-week waste management plan for the Lyulin and Krasno Selo districts.

Citizens and Organisations Step Up

The crisis has prompted Sofia residents to use their own resources, time, and effort to collect and remove overflowing waste from containers in the two districts. People began organising spontaneously, encouraging each other to prevent waste accumulation.

Gorata.bg

Volunteers from the Gorata.bg initiative raised nearly BGN 80,000 within hours to buy waste collection trucks, said Nikola Rahnev, founder of Gorata.bg, in a statement to BTA. They plan to purchase two professional trucks worth a total of BGN 110,000. The vehicles are being shipped from Austria and are expected to arrive on Friday or Saturday, and to be put into use on Sunday. According to Rahnev, the two trucks will transport dozens of tonnes of waste daily. They also intend to buy containers depending on the additional funds collected. Rahnev expressed happiness at how Sofia’s people are uniting to solve the problem together in the face of the crisis.

The trucks will remain the property of the Gorata.bg Foundation rather than being donated to Sofia Municipality or any other local authority. This arrangement ensures fairness, morality, and operational efficiency, but the trucks will be made available free of charge for as long as needed. The first deployment will be to Sofia Municipality to help mitigate the current waste crisis, Rahnev added.

Lyubomir Martinov, Journalist

“My wife, our neighbours from the nearby kebab shop, and I organised spontaneously to clear the area in front of our building from piles of waste. It took us about an hour and a half to gather all the rubbish into 30-40 bags of 120 litres each and take them to one of the three large containers in Krasno Selo,” Martinov told BTA.

Asked why he helped, he cited a survival instinct. “The waste crisis poses a health hazard, not to mention the awful smell spreading from the rubbish piles. I understand local authorities in Sofia are struggling for reasons beyond their control. I’m not one to rely on the State to fix problems. We must find a solution together and not allow people with nicknames to dictate the lives and agenda of Sofia’s citizens. We are not and must never be anyone’s feudal possession,” Martinov said.

Vesselena Marcheva, Marketing Manager

“Today we cleaned in front of our building in what was a sociological and social experiment. A homeless man joined us voluntarily to help fill the bags,” Marcheva recounted. Soon after, a woman stopped by and insisted on donating BGN 20, apologising for not being able to help otherwise. Another woman said the only way to fight the racketeers extorting Sofia’s citizens with the waste crisis was through such efforts, Marcheva said. She expressed regret that more people had not joined the clean-up, noting that Bulgarians like to complain but rarely take responsibility for their environment.

Ivan Ivanov, Architect

“I do this because I believe it is best to change our environment by personal example and to be the change we want to see,” Ivanov told BTA. He collects waste with his car from overflowing bins on Haydushka Polyana Street and transports it to containers that are regularly emptied. He supports the Mayor’s fight against cartel extortion.

“The problem is entirely political, involving yet another State money drain that could instead fund education, healthcare, culture, and infrastructure,” Ivanov said. He added that the mafia has met its match in Mayor Terziev, who resists their pressure. “This is where citizens come in; simple actions can ease the situation until a permanent solution is found.”

Ivanov believes a new public tender should be launched to select a waste collection company, with police, prosecutors, and courts preventing arson attacks on trucks from companies offering better prices. He also said the municipality and the waste plant must develop sufficient capacity to handle collection and processing to avoid such crises.

The Sofia City Council is set to discuss Mayor Terziev’s report seeking approval for the municipal company Sofekostroy to spend up to BGN 9 million in own and borrowed funds to purchase equipment to tackle Sofia’s waste crisis. Meanwhile, volunteers continue to grow in number, solidarity increases, and the clearing and removal of waste containers carry on.

The waste management situation in Sofia became critical in the Lyulin and Krasno Selo boroughs, where the municipality introduced an emergency waste-collection system after refusing to sign waste collection contracts with what town hall says are inflated prices, allegedly linked to figures from the underground. Under the emergency system, residents continue to use the grey bins. When full, small trucks empty them into larger grey containers, placed at three locations in Krasno Selo and eight in Lyulin, which are then transported to a plant in the village of Yana near Sofia. There have been unconfirmed reports of garbage from elsewhere being dumped in the affected boroughs in order to further exacerbate the situation. Commenting the waste management crisis, Terziev said on Facebook that "this is not a waste crisis. This is a clash between two worlds - the old one, where a few people with nicknames and influence dictate the rules, and the new one, where the people want transparency, order and justice". 

A few months ago, a procedure was launched to select companies for waste collection in several parts of the capital. A Turkish company which bid for a contract for the two boroughs had four of its trucks set on fire and withdrew from the competition. "This left a single participant, which won the contract, and this is a company linked to Taki [an alias of the controversial businessman Hristoforos Amanatidis]," Yes, Bulgaria Co-Chair and MP Ivaylo Mirchev said on September 19, adding that waste disposal in Sofia had previously cost BGN 144 per tonne, while the company connected to Taki offered BGN 420 per tonne. Sofia Mayor Vassil Terziev rejected the offer.

Terziev insisted the Municipality would not yield to “mafia practices” and thanked volunteers and neighbouring municipalities for assisting in the clean-up. Emergency municipal operations were launched, involving small collection teams and trucks transferring waste to larger containers for disposal at the Yana facility near Sofia.