From next year, the residents of Vilnius will have to separate organic waste from the rest of their rubbish, the city’s council decided on Wednesday.
Twenty-eight council members supported the initiative, while 15 voted against.
The municipality said that food waste sorting will be implemented in several stages. From January 2024, food waste will have to be put in separate orange bags, but placed in common mixed waste containers.
These bags will then be separated from other waste and turned into compost, while the bags will be recycled. According to the municipality, separate containers for food waste will be installed in the future future.
So far, Vilnius has been sorting plastic, paper, metal, glass packaging and recyclables.
“These changes will affect a large part of households in Vilnius, so we are introducing them gradually, knowing that it will take time to get used to them and to form new habits,” the chief of Vilnius Municipality Administration, Adomas Bužinskas, was quoted in a statement.
“By implementing the changes in phases, we will avoid a significant increase in the cost of waste collection and management, which would be caused by servicing additional food waste containers. We will switch to the use of these containers in the future, once the critical mass of the food waste sorting population is reached,” he said.
According to him, Vilnius is taking cue from Ukmergė, a town in central Lithuania, which introduced organic waste sorting last May, as well as Scandinavian countries.
From December this year, Vilnius residents will be provided with orange disposable bags made of at least 90-percent recycled materials and durable 7-litre buckets.
According to the municipality, Lithuanian municipalities are obliged to manage food waste separately from 2024 under Lithuanian legislation, a change that has been encouraged by an EU directive.
More information is available on atliekuetiketas.lt.
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