Project partners visit the largest solid waste landfill in the Baltic States – “Getliņi”

At the beginning of April a group of LIFE FitforREACH-2 project experts visited SIA “Getlini EKO” operating the largest solid waste landfill in the Baltic States – “Getliņi”, which is currently developed as a modern waste management centre. Half of Latvia's unsorted household waste ends up in the Getliņi landfill. The aim was to trigger the exchange of good practice examples among project experts from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland about operation practice with unsorted household waste streams and how to manage the risk related to hazardous substances from waste to secondary materials. 

Acknowledging the large variety of non-sorted waste streams, our focus was on how the company can identify presence of hazardous substances in waste streams. Important aspect was to get an overview on challenges the company is facing with the waste to ensure the environmental protection throughout the waste sorting at the premises and landfilling. The company is processing the construction waste containing mineral materials (asphalt, concrete, bricks) - crushed stone and screenings to obtain the secondary raw materials as construction products. Another stream of secondary raw materials refers to ferrous scrap metal. Part of these secondary raw materials are sold on the market.

The operation of the waste pre-sorting facility started in October 2015, by the Environmental Resource Center, a company of the environmental services company Clean R group, which collects separated plastic, paper, cardboard waste streams for further recycling or used in solid recovered fuel (SRF) production, while separated ferrous and non-ferrous metals go to metal recycling companies. Separated biodegradable (BIO) waste is used in “Getliņi” for biogas production.

During the visit it was pointed out that the challenge for the pre-sorting operations is caused by the presence of waste containing hazardous materials, for example, accumulators, tires, batteries. Such types of waste shall not end up at unsorted household waste when managed in a sustainable way and collected separately.

Photos by Liga Karkle (BEF Latvia)