Project Team Visit to Zenica
The project team were in Zenica to meet with the waste management company ALBA who are responsible for the municipal waste management in the city of Zenica. It was a really interesting meeting and it was great to hear the excellent work being done by Alba in the city. They have done some really good work on raising awareness in schools and pre-schools.
It was a pleasure listening to Dr Džafer Dautbegović and his colleague Ms, Mirsada Hasanbašić. We hope to work more closely with the Zenica Canton on the waste management planning component of the project and will welcome the opportunity to have close collaboration with ALBA.
Visit to Banja Luka
It was good to have our mission to the Republika Srpska this month and to meet some of the key project stakeholders from there. It was also lovely to meet our local expert from Banja Luka, Dr Drazenko Bjelic.
We had a really good programme for the week-long visit and this included meetings with the Ministry of Environment where we met Mr Dusko Solomun and Mr Marko Gajic; we also met with representatives from the Chamber of Commerce of the Republika Srpska – Mrs Dragana Kokot and Mr Marko Savić. It was really good to hear all the excellent work being done by the Chamber in regard to the Circular Economy Agenda. We had a tour round their excellent conferencing facilities and we look forward to close co-operation with them throughout the CETAP project.
In addition to those meetings we also met with representatives - Aleksandar Bajić and Vladimir Ilić -of the Banja Luka Cistoca who are responsible for municipal waste management in the Banja Luka Municipal area. It was a really helpful meeting and provided us with a detailed insight into the role of the Cistoca in the context of waste management activities and the broader interest in Circular Economy.
We had a similarly fruitful meeting with Mr Ratko Jokić, Director, DE-POT Company who operate the regional landfill of Banja Luka.
We also had an excellent meeting with Mr Zoran Lukač who hosted the meeting at the offices of the Environment Protection Fund in Banja Luka. This was our first opportunity to discuss the project with him and to explain the importance of the role to be played by the Environment Protection Fund particularly in regard to the provision of data and also the proposed hosting of the new Waste Exchange Platform to be developed under the project.
Lastly, while in Banja Luka we managed to meet with Mrs Andela Laketic, EuroBeta who explained the role that EuroBeta play in the only Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Scheme in the Republika Srpska. She explained that the system in the Republika Srpska in terms of the EPR scheme was based on non-hazardous packaging waste only. She was really informative and we learned a lot about the operation of the EPR Scheme in the Republika Srpska.
Before we left the Republika Srpska we had a couple of more meetings to attend, firstly with Boris Malinovic, Director, Promal AB Company. Mr Malinovic informed the team that his company had facilities at Brcko District and also at Bijeljina where their focus was the recycling of paper & packaging waste. They have been doing this as a family business for 15 years now. They manage plastic waste and other packaging waste but are not within the EPR scheme.