Ukrainians can utilize hazardous pesticides abroad

The problem of pesticides has been of concern to farmers and environmentalists in Ukraine and abroad. About 80% of the land in Europe is contaminated with pesticides. More than 8.5 thousand tons of dangerous pesticides are stored in Ukraine, writes “Agro-Center”.

On November 21, the Cabinet of Ministers approved amendments to document that regulates the transboundary movement of hazardous wastes and their disposal. The amendments allow Ukrainian enterprises to export them abroad.

Ostap Semerak noted that in order to make such changes, the government regulated all acts in accordance with international requirements, in particular, the Basel Convention.

“In fact, there was only one enterprise in Ukraine able to dispose of such waste. If it stops operating, the country’s will collapse. Today, we don’t have enterprises that can utilize this type of waste. However, there are such enterprises in other countries. However, due to legislative issues, an option to dispose of pesticides abroad has been unavailable. It is obvious that we cannot depend on one enterprise, endanger lives and health of our citizens, and increase the amount of chemical waste,”

said the Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine Ostap Semerak.

In the past, there was only one enterprise in Ukraine that utilized such waste. When it stopped operating, the country collapsed.

“From now on, economic entities will be able to independently calculate which way of utilizing unusable chemicals in the agrarian sector is best. We will finally begin to clean the country from this poison,”

added Ostap Semerak.