site.btaNo Violations Regarding Hospital Waste Detected in 2024 during Scheduled Inspections in Sofia - Health Minister

Minister of Environment and Water Manol Genov Sunday said that the 11 planned inspections carried out by the Sofia Regional Inspectorate of Environment and Water (RIEW) last year found no violations in the processing of medical waste from hospitals. He was taking a question on bTV about the recently established unregulated mixing of hazardous hospital waste with municipal waste at Sofia's waste processing plant.

On April 1, Health Minister Silvi Kirilov warned that there is a huge risk of an epidemic due to Sofia's municipal waste treatment plant decision to stop taking waste from hospitals. The plant justified its decision with having found that household waste had been mixed with hazardous medical waste from hospitals. Sofia Mayor Vasil Terziev refuted Kirilov's warning. An on-site inspection established violations, Terziev reported and added that it would be better to have the authorities inspect not the garbage processing plant but of garbage collection companies.

According to Minister Genov, the planned inspections are about the way the medical waste is transported, while the control of hospital waste is carried out by the Regional Health Inspectorate under the Ministry of Health. "In Sofia, this control is carried out by the Regional Health Inspectorate. We, as the Ministry of Environment and the Regional Environmental Protection Inspectorate in Sofia, carry out planned inspections. For 2024, we have 11 such inspections. The planned inspections are on the way this waste is transported. Not a single violation has been noted in our reports," Genov explained.

The Minister noted that according to the provisions of the Waste Management Act, the mayor of the municipality has obligations to the activities of garbage collection, disposal, treatment, both for municipal waste, hazardous and construction waste. He said Sofia  Municipality, with its representatives who are at the garbage plant, should check what goes into its landfill instead of passing the buck. "We have done enough checks, we respond to every alert. Sofia Municipality has powers, it has inspectors, and this [waste processing] plant has control over what goes into it," Genov argued.

According to him, for five months Sofia Municipality has not submitted its reports to the national waste information system. "This non-submission and this hiding of data, in my opinion, is precisely because of the inability of the plant to cope with the incoming amount of waste," Genov said, adding that there is already an instruction from the Regional Environmental Protection Agency that everything outside the landfill be cleaned up.