The Solid Waste Management Company of Georgia - About us
What we do – cleaning up the past and laying a new ground for the future
Waste is a very critical subject, wherever and whenever – everybody creates waste, nobody wants waste. Everybody complains about waste, but nobody can completely avoid it. Waste is an unpleasant, unwanted but unavoidable issue in modern societies.
Western societies have built up sophisticated systems of separation, collection and recycling of waste. These systems were built up during decades. Many countries in transition, like Georgia, have just started building up modern waste management systems and have to clean up the former unregulated landfills and illegal dumpsites.
This is the main task of the Solid Waste Management Company of Georgia: clean up and rehabilitate old dumpsites and landfills, close landfills where necessary, create transfer stations, construct new regional landfills and thus, step by step build up a new, modern waste management system following the regional approach, that was successfully implemented in many countries.
The Company in Brief
--> MoreKey Facts and Figures
Established on April 24, 2012 under the Ministry of Regional Development and Infrastructure
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The government holds 100 % shares of the company
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Since 2013, the company owns and operates 53 former municipal landfills
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The company has a total of 272 staff (68 in the head office Tbilisi and 204 in regional offices)
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The company is reponsible for solid waste management with respect to landfills in Georgia, excluding the city of Tbiliisi and the Adjara region————————-
The company is going to construct 8 to 10 new regional landfills.
2012 – A new policy for waste management in Georgia
Municipalities in the past had difficulties to assure the necessary resources. This resulted in dumpsites and badly operated landfills, creating a lot of problems for environment and people. On April 24, 2012 the state-owned Solid Waste Management Company of Georgia (SWMCG) was established under the Ministry of Regional Development and Infrastructure. In accordance with the new legal framework the Solid Waste Management Company of Georgia was established mainly in order to:
- Take over and operate 53 municipal landfills and dump sites
- Improve the operational standard of the municipal dump sites (rehabilitate and operate professionally)
- Construct new regional landfills compliant with EU standards and support the municipalities to comply with new upcoming standards for waste management and separate collection
- Gradually close down the existing municipal dump sites when the new landfills will be in operation.
2013 to 2016 – Implementing the new waste managment policy
From 2013 SWMCG has taken over 53 formerly municipal landfills all over Georgia and is administrating them. This is a huge challenge and a heavy and difficult heritage from the past. Almost all landfills were operated in a chaotic way and without respecting even the most basic rules for protecting the environment. We have successfully taken up this challenge and we have improved the quality of live of thousands of citizens that were formerly suffering from smoke, smell and waste blown by the wind from unregulated landfills and dumpsites. We have reduced the negative impacts of landfills on environment and nature considerably, in some cases completely.
From 2016 onwards – Creating the new system of regional landfills
During the coming years we will continue with rehabilitations and closings of landfills and we will also step forward in improving the waste sector by constructing new, modern landfills compliant with EU standards that will replace in time most of the currently existing landfills and dumpsites.
