The announcement was made by the head of Environment, Adrián Peña, after finalizing the ministerial agreement, on Monday the 14th, carried out with the president, Luis Lacalle Pou. The resolution that will release the funds for the portfolio to work on the National Waste Management Plan and formalize the work of the sorters was signed by the president on this day.
Peña confirmed that the resolution that grants the Ministry of Environment (MA) 17 million dollars to collaborate with municipal governments in the closure of landfills was signed by the President of the Republic, Luis Lacalle Pou, and the Minister of Economy and Finance , Azucena Arbeleche.
He added that a commission was formed between the ministry, the Congress of Mayors and the Office of Planning and Budget (OPP) to analyze the agreements that will be made with each municipality. “We begin to walk on that milestone that is the National Waste Management Plan to close the open-air dumps,” he said; 16 of the departments of Uruguay today dispose of the waste in disposal sites located in places not authorized by the state secretariat.
It is an environmental issue but also a social one, added the hierarch, since it generates 5,000 people to work informally and through the plan an attempt is made to combat this situation. In this sense, setting up sorting stations in the current dumps will achieve, through different ways, such as social cooperatives, formalizing the work of the sorters, he added.
Likewise, Peña indicated that work will be carried out by department, but in some cases regionalization will be evaluated, such as in Tacuarembó and Rivera, Río Negro and Soriano or Cerro Largo and Treinta y Tres.
packaging law
The head of Environment indicated that in recent months the Chamber of Industries of Uruguay (CIU) has led a process to regularize the situation of disposable packaging. A new plan was presented and it will begin to be implemented throughout the territory, since today it is only applied in six departments, he explained.
In addition, the tender will be called for what will be the reimbursement deposit system, a machine at one can take the disposable that is thrown away today and be rewarded with an economic incentive, he said. He added that at the Plastics Summit, this year in Punta del Este, the CIU will present the machines that will work in Uruguay at the end of 2023.
environmental crimes
Peña reaffirmed the ministry’s commitment to penalize those who commit environmental offenses with a degree of crime. For this reason, he recalled that they are working on a new project that summarizes others already presented to Parliament.
