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Incinerators "burn" money, trash ends up in landfills

2025-09-01 19:36:00, Denoncim Denoncim

In March 2015, work began on the construction of Albania's first waste-to-energy plant next to the former metallurgical plant in Elbasan. According to the government, the incinerator would provide a solution to waste collection and disposal, as well as produce green energy through its technological treatment.

"It is a plant that is being installed for the first time in our country, but with this installation it also constitutes the foundation to radically transform all relationships with the environment in their first step, the relationship with the waste that has been drowning Albania for 20 years, and that we have decided to turn from a source of pollution and cancer into a source of energy. This is our commitment", promised Prime Minister Edi Rama at the time.

The Elbasan incinerator cost the state budget 26 million euros and is the smallest among the Albanian government's three costly public-private partnership contracts, which are being investigated for corruption and money laundering by the Special Prosecution Office, SPAK.

Incinerators, which were supposed to be a modern solution, became a symbol of corruption and abuse.

Justice

The Court Against Corruption and Organized Crime (CAC) has issued guilty verdicts in the case of three incinerators, in Elbasan, Tirana and Fier. For the Fier incinerator, the court decided to convict 12 defendants.

For the Elbasan incinerator case, 9 defendants were sentenced, and for the Tirana incinerator, 8 defendants were sentenced.

In all three cases, for the Elbasan, Fier and Tirana incinerators, Lefter Koka, former Minister of Environment, Alqi Bllako, former Secretary General of the Ministry of Environment, and the "de facto" owners of the incinerators, Klodian Zoto and Mirel Mërtiri, have received sentences.

While other convicted persons are mainly administrators, members of the tender bid evaluation and owners of various entities that issued fictitious invoices for the performance of works.

Incinerators "burn" money, trash ends up in landfills

New waste reform

Ten years later, the prime minister's pledge that garbage would be turned from a source of cancer into a source of energy was extinguished along with millions of euros of Albanian taxpayers.

Without taking any responsibility, the prime minister, together with the Minister of Environment Mirela Kumbaro, presented a new reform for integrated waste management as a necessity on Albania's path to EU membership.

"This is the most challenging chapter of the negotiations and this is the most challenging aspect of our membership in the European Union," Rama said, referring to Chapter 27 on the Environment.

At the core of the reform is the creation of a public company (the National Waste Treatment Operator).

"A new enterprise that will be available to the entire Republic, local governments, citizens, centralizing the entire waste treatment process. It will no longer be a process administered by municipalities, but administered by this national operator, in cooperation with all other links of government. Municipalities will be clients, just as they are clients of other operators for other services," said Prime Minister Edi Rama.

While Kumbaro explained the role of municipalities after the creation of the National Waste Operator.

"Municipalities do not have the competence to manage the territory for waste management, that is, cleanliness in the territory. But it will be the national operator that will do all the heavy infrastructure and waste treatment," she asserted.

The new reform for integrated waste management in Albania foresees the construction of new landfills in Kukës, Dibër and Berat.

Also, their expansion to Elbasan, Fier, Korça, Bushat and Bajkal.

In parallel with these investments, plants for waste processing and composting of organic waste will also be added.

The reform also foresees the closure of dozens of illegal landfills and increased penalties for polluters. Manufacturing and importing companies will be forced to trace their waste all the way to recycling.

Incinerators "burn" money, trash ends up in landfills

The reform that needed to be done

Olsi Nika from "Eco Albania" says that the government was forced to admit failure and the reform presented should have been done from the beginning.

"It's the famous R strategy. First, you need to reduce the use of materials and waste as much as possible. The second is to reuse what is considered waste, the principle of the circular economy. The moment you can neither reduce nor reuse it, you change its form and recycling comes in, the third R," explains Nika.

"Because the waste management chain starts at your home and mine, and this chain has never been taken seriously in Albania. Pilot programs, shows, strategies have been made, and there is no will because waste is money," he concludes.

Mihallaq Qirjo, a professor at the Faculty of Natural Sciences, also sees recycling as the right solution.

"We need to see the re-use of materials that have come out of a cycle of use. So here I believe that we still have room to see the development of the country on a greener path," he asserts, adding that, "the waste management strategy through incineration was wrong from the beginning, which is why we have these results today."

Conclusion
Based on the information collected, we categorize Prime Minister Edi Rama's promise that incinerators would radically transform all relationships with the environment, turning waste from a source of pollution into clean energy, as an unfulfilled promise./ faktoje.al