On April 24, around 19:00 at the port of “Varna – West” we intercepted another ship delivering imported waste for incineration in Bulgaria. They had started unloading an hour ago. 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 called the Verratal. Sails under the flag of Antigua and Barbuda. And this ship arrives from Italy. According to the characteristics of the ship, about 2997 tons of goods will most likely be unloaded.

So far you will say nothing new. Didn’t you deal with another ship with imported waste on April 3rd? As usual – junk from Italy posing as RDF fuel. The ship that arrived on April 3 was from the port of Taranto (Italy). Then this port first appeared on the map of the areas from where we import waste. Today we have a new area. The ship had arrived from the port of Genoa. Thus, the Italian destinations detected by us became three. To the regions of Abruzzo and Puglia, Liguria is added. In April alone, we detected that just under 6,000 tons of waste, classified as RDF fuel, were unloaded at the port of “Varna Zapad”.

Enough with the facts. From here on, we can speculate by concluding that we clearly have another 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.