Compost

Municipal authorities across Greece have until the end of the year to come up with a plan to halve the amount of solid waste that ends up at landfills, Alternate Environment Minister Sokratis Famellos told an event in Thessaloniki over the weekend.

Alternate Environment Minister Sokratis Famelos announced Wednesday that 150 million euros of available European Union funds will be used for waste management projects in Attica.

A newly-built waste processing plant in Bulgaria's capital Sofia will begin operating on Monday, the city mayor has announced.

Bulgaria's Environment Minister Ivelina Vasileva will cut the ribbon on a new waste management system in the northwestern city of Vidin ON Tuesday afternoon.

The site was built with funding provided under operational program Environment 2007-2013, according to a media statement of the Environment Ministry.

The Bulgarian Managing Authority of operational program Environment 2014-2020 has launched the first grant-awarding procedure.

The procedure involves the designing and construction of compost plants for separate collection of biodegradable waste and green waste, according to a media statement on the website of the operational program.

A few days after the government put to public debate its plan to overhaul the country?s waste management, with a greater focus on recycling and a bigger onus on local government, authorities in Patra, in the Peloponnese, have warned that their trash situation risks becoming a ?terrible threat to public health.?

As part of the Greek capital's uphill battle with urban waste management, the City of Athens on Tuesday announced that it will be distributing 2,000 composting bins to as many households in the metropolitan area by 2015 in order to encourage homes to recycle their organic waste.

Dan Vodnar, a young scientist of the Romanian city Cluj-Napoca the inventor of anti-microbial packaging derived from gastropod shell, algae and other natural ingredients has become the first Romanian to receive the Danubius Young Scientist Award, the 2014 edition.

Greeks produced more municipal waste than the average European Union citizen in 2012 and more of it ended up being buried in landfills than was the norm for the 28-member block.

Greece produced an average of 503 kilos of municipal waste per resident compared to the EU average of 492 kilos.