Bosnian Authorities Failing to Tackle Food Waste

Food wastage in Bosnia and Herzegovina is common despite the country being one of the poorest in the region, with around 600,000 people living below the poverty line, earning under 120 euros a month.

"Organic waste and food unfortunately make up even 60 to 70 per cent of the waste we collect every day in Tuzla," Ekrem Durakovic, an employee of the state company Komunalac, which clears up the city's rubbish, told BIRN.

Unsold fruit and vegetables are usually thrown away by the several big supermarkets in the town, Durakovic added.

Organic waste represents some 50 per cent of the total garbage produced in the country, Banja Luka-based newspaper Nezavisne Novine reported on Monday, quoting data provided by rubbish dumps in Sarajevo, Tuzla and Banja Luka itself.

Emir Zukic, the director of the Moscanica dump in the city of Zenica, told BIRN that he was seeing a lower percentage of organic waste, but uneaten food was often found.

"Here the percentage of organic waste is no more than 40 per cent of the total ? still, we're used to finding a lot of food in it, for us it's just normal," Zukic said.

In several of the biggest Bosnian cities, like Tuzla or the capital Sarajevo, food and organic waste are picked up by regular rubbish trucks as separate collectors and recycling are still uncommon in the country.

"In our canton there is no particular treatment for this kind of waste," Zijada Krvavac from the Sarajevo canton's environment ministry told BIRN.

"Most of it is just stored at the city dump, while part of it is given away to feed cattle at local farms, and part of it - especially organic waste coming from parks - is used for compost," Krvavac said.

In recent months, several European countries...