On April 3, around 19:00 at the port of “Varna – West” we intercepted another ship delivering imported waste for incineration in Bulgaria. They were unloading it. A check on the website Marine Trafic, which provides real-time online information on the position of floating vessels, revealed that the unloaded vessel was named the Valentina. It flies the flag of Barbados. He arrived in Varna on April 2, having left Italy on March 28. According to the ship’s characteristics, it will most likely unload about 2,998 tons of goods.
So far you will say nothing new. Junk from Italy presented as RDF fuel as usual. And we thought so at the beginning and were ready to put it in the statistics. What aroused interest was the name of the port from which he departed – Taranto (Italy). This is the first time we have detected waste imports from this port. A quick check on Google Maps shows that Taranto is a port from another geographical, respectively and administrative region of Italy. Until now, our observations have consistently identified two main destinations for waste imports. One port is HARTLEPOOL, near the town of Middlesbrough, Great Britain, part of the English North East. Large generators of waste in this area are also the cities of Sunderland and Newcastle. The second port is Ortona, Southern Italy, Chieti province, Abruzzo region. The new destination – Taranto, is a province in southern Italy and a port of the Puglia region.
Enough with the facts. From here on, we can speculate by concluding that we obviously have a new supplier region. Will it be added to our already known supplier regions? Will it replace some of the “traditional” ones? Have the import quantities increased? We will seek answers to these questions from the Ministry of Environment and Water.
By the time we get them, the imported product will have long been converted into energy, dioxins, furans, etc. You do remember that when criminals want to cover up a crime they erase the traces through the so-called operation “Barbecue”? A fire that burns all the clues. The waste incineration process is a slow killer of humans. It is also for increasing the quality of waste management in communities.
The Public Center for Environment and Sustainable Development has been tracking the import of waste for incineration in Bulgaria since 2015. Stay tuned for our new investigation into how much waste is imported and incinerated in Vernenska Oblast.
