07 Oct 2024
From January 1, 2025, all EU member states and their municipalities will necessarily collect textile waste separately, and Stara Zagora Municipality, which was the first to start its participation in the TEXAD project, is already discussing how to practically implement this. The full name of the project is "TEXAD - Improving circular solutions for textile waste for European municipalities", financed under the Interreg Europe 2021-2027 program. How to think and act "green", to strengthen the management of textile waste, its separate collection, logistics and sorting - this is the summarized goal of the project, on which the municipal administration in Stara Zagora has been working since mid-July 2024. The project will continue until March 2028.
A meeting organized by the "Investment, Energy Efficiency and Green Transition" department was held today in Stara Zagora Municipality with companies and institutions whose activities are related to ecology and separate waste collection. The meeting was attended by Rositsa Raykova, head of the department and head of the TEXAD project, Veronika Petkova, chief expert in the investment department and Plamen Yordanov, head of the "Ecology, landscaping and forests" department. On behalf of the Regional Administration, Deputy Regional Governor Levent Palov expressed interest in the topic.
Among the priority problems, Ms. Raykova outlined the low level of awareness among the wider public about how to give this type of waste a new life - both from an ecological and economic point of view. She immediately gave an example of the widespread exchange in our country of reduced children's clothes between close families, as this informal pass-on culture is also a kind of "green" policy. This is the good example, but a lot more can be done in terms of awareness.
The financing of everything related to the separate collection and utilization of textile waste is also a problem, which was also summarized at today's meeting.
And the third problem is the still missing legislative framework. The Textile Waste Management Ordinance, which has not yet been adopted, is in draft.
The complex issue of waste is a challenge that the Municipality of Stara Zagora is ambitious to tackle. It is necessary to work in an innovative way, because as a society we can be much more responsible for our waste, emphasized the participants in today's meeting.
Fashion is one of the sectors that has the greatest impact on the environment, approximately 5.8 million tons of waste is generated from textiles per year. It is the third sector that uses the most in terms of water quantity and the fifth in terms of raw materials and generation of greenhouse emissions. 9 out of 10 Europeans think that clothes could be used longer, so here there is potential for textiles to be returned to the economy and to trigger the circular economy process, the head of the investment department of Stara Zagora Municipality also noted in his presentation.
The vision of the EU regarding textile waste is for this sector to be more ecological, competitive and resistant to external influences, Rositsa Raykova also formulated.
The meeting was also attended by the director of RISW-Stara Zagora, Eng. Diana Ganeva and Sirma Zheleva, executive director of the Bulgarian Association "Circular Textiles" (BAKT), who noted the successfully implemented initiative of the Municipality with the containers, specialized for collecting used clothes, shoes and home textiles. I myself live near the "Artillery" park, where there is such a container, and I see how people are already forming a culture of walking a few meters further from ordinary garbage containers and putting their unnecessary clothes in the specialized container, said Eng. Diana Ganeva. Textile waste leaves a serious carbon footprint, so we have to be responsible for it, added the director of RISW.
The care of every Staro Zagoret citizen for his waste should be to make a little effort to get it to the right container, Plamen Yordanov added in support.
At the beginning of September, part of the team of the "Investment, Energy Efficiency and Green Transition" department in the Municipality of Stara Zagora visited the Swedish city of Borås (in Swedish: Borås) to study the successful European practices for textile waste management.
