The issue of solid domestic waste (SDW) is one of mankind's most important environmental, economic and social problems. It is not without reason that back in 1994 the European Parliament adopted European Directive No. 94/62 "On Packages and Waste Management". It is also worth noting that on April 23, 2003 the Commission on Human Rights of the UN Economic and Social Council unanimously adopted in the first reading a resolution stating that environmental violations might have a direct affect on the human rights issue.

The SDW issue is especially pressing in countries with transitional economy such as Ukraine. For instance, approximately 5 billion m3 of SDW have been accumulated in the country, stored at 750 landfills, many of which are filled by 60-90%, while others are overfilled and should have been closed long time ago. Donetsk Oblast has accumulated about 400 million m3 of SDW. 80 SDW landfills with total area of 230 hectares are active - many of them are close to 100% fill-up (on the whole, about 130 enterprises in the region have received licenses for construction and operation of SDW landfills). At the same time 600-700 unauthorized ("wild") SDW dumps are annually revealed in the region.

According to published data for recent years (V.I. Smetanin "Environment Protection from Industrial and Domestic Waste" - M.: Kolos, 2000 - 280 pages; B.B. Bobovich, V.V. Deviatkin "Recycling of Industrial and Domestic Waste". M.: Intermet Engineering, 2000 - 495 pages; V.R. Purim "Domestic Waste". M. Energoatomizdat, 2002 - 112 pages, Internet) The average composition of SDW (in fact, it is Russian SDW) looks rather contradictory (see Tables 1).

Table 1. - Characteristics of SDW Components

In Ukraine the norms of SDW accumulation are regulated by the document of the State Committee of Housing and Public Utility Services at the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine "Recommended Norms of Solid Domestic Waste Accumulation for Populated Areas of Ukraine, 1995" as well as by "recognized" "Rules of Provision of Services for Collection and Removal of Solid Domestic and Sewerage Waste" (Ratified by the Order of the State Committee of Construction and Architecture of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine №64 as of 21.03.2000).

However, the city authorities of any city of Ukraine are empowered to set their own SDW norms. For instance, by the decision as of 21.12.1999 the Donetsk city council has ratified "Average City Differentiated Norms of SDW Accumulation", the same decision has been adopted by the Khartsizsk city council (№160 as of 3.03.1999). The norms of SDW accumulation extracted from the above-mentioned documents are provided in table 2.

Table 2 - Recommended norms of SDW accumulation (m3/person per year)

As it can be seen at table 4, the recommended norms of SDW accumulation for residential municipal buildings of the city of Donetsk (as compared with Ukrainian and Khartsizsk ones) are unreasonably underestimated. At the same time the norms for residential houses with no modern conveniences are overestimated.

In Donetsk an average of 76% (of rated value) of domestic waste has been removed to "legal" SDW landfills. It may be assumed that the remaining 24% of SDW has been dumped at unauthorized ("wild") dumps numbering at about 250 in Donetsk (850 in Donetsk Oblast with a total of 150,000 m3 of waste, i.e. approx. 170 m3 per one "wild" dump.

According to the data of the Donetsk DPUS in the year 2002 in the city of Donetsk 1020322 m3 of SDW collected from the population has been removed to "official" landfills; another 76660 m3 of SDW has been taken from "wild" dumps (to liquidate the latter) to brought to "official" ones, i.e. all in all it makes about 1100000 m3 of SDW/year (beside that, 63800 m3 of SDW has been removed from enterprises - big trade companies and others, however, this figure will not be taken into consideration. If to base the calculations on the minimal "Ukrainian" calculated figure, i.e. 1245.5 m3 of SDW per year (table 5) then it can be stated that in the year 2002 there was removed 88% of SDW, if to take a calculated figure based on Donetsk norms - then it is 82%.

Another problem: among 12000 enterprises of all forms of ownership registered in Donetsk only 3500 (about 30%) have concluded agreements for removal of domestic and construction waste, the rest of them remove it by their own forces. A question rises: do the remaining 70% of the Donetsk enterprises always bring their waste to "official" landfills? Alas, far from that! "Wild" dumps, however, are partially provoked by contradictory local legislation. For instance, for some reason SDW removed from the private residential sector do not include furnace ashes, branches, construction waste, "street" waste, which follows from the "Rules of Municipal Improvements, Sanitary Cleaning of Areas, Assurance of Cleanness and Order in the city of Donetsk", section III (ratified by the decision of the session of the city council №15/6 as of 22.11.2001) as well as from the "Operation Manual" attached to waste collection trucks.

Therefore, public utilities responsible for sanitary cleaning do not consider the above-mentioned type of waste as SDW and refuse to remove them by waste collection trucks - this waste is removed by tip-up lorries provided that there is a special contract or the residents of private houses should do that by themselves. Unfortunately, hardly anybody does it and as a result very often this kind of waste appears at "wild" dumps.