Money in waste. How waste recycling can become a profitable business

When people in Ukraine talk about recycling, they almost always mention Sweden. And for good reason. In this country, only 3% of waste is thrown away, the rest is reused, recycled, or incinerated. In Ukraine, on the other hand, about 94% of waste is taken to landfills, the official area of which has already reached 100 square kilometers, i.e. 12% of the territory of Kyiv.

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What to do with waste is a problem not only for city administrations but also for industrial enterprises. For example, our company specializes in the production of roll packaging, ready-made bags for a wide range of goods and flexographic printing, so our process waste is 10% of our total output. This is an optimal indicator for our industry, but it is a lot for the environment. And this is a problem. Today, about 10% of polymers are recycled in Ukraine, while the rest end up in landfills and will decompose there for hundreds of years, polluting the earth. This is already well understood at the state level. For example, since January 2023, Ukraine has banned the distribution of thin and ultra-thin plastic bags, known as "machetes" and even smaller ones up to 50 microns thick. Alternative biodegradable bags are sold for UAH 1.5 per piece to motivate consumers to refuse to buy disposable bags. And this is the right initiative, in my opinion.

We started thinking about this problem when we started our company in 2006. Why? Because a company usually reflects the values of its owner, and my family hasn't thrown away any garbage for many years. We take everything that can be recycled - paper, cans, glass - to recycling centers on the way to work. We bury organic waste under raspberries and have a good harvest in the summer.

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The same rule applies in the company. We sort all household waste in the office, and our employees bring this culture to their families. Speaking of industrial production, we first learned to sort our process waste - to divide it into those that can be recycled and the rest. We have about half of both.

Back in 2020, we decided to start a new business and purchased equipment worth about $100,000 that allows us to process polymers into pellets at our production site. And then we sell them for 32 UAH per kilogram. At first, we didn't think about the return on investment at all. I was motivated by other things - that there was a queue for our pellets, the warehouses were not clogged with waste, and I was not paying for them, but rather receiving money. However, later we realized that this is an attractive business and that we can return the investment made in the purchase of equipment in five years. Now we even take waste, the same polymers, from our colleagues to increase production and make the project even more profitable.

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We have never disposed of waste in a landfill. We hand over those that cannot be recycled to licensed companies for disposal. You have to pay for it. Currently, it costs 6 hryvnias to recycle each kilogram of waste, and this cost is constantly growing. We work with two plants in Brovary (Kyiv region) and Zhytomyr, where German equipment allows us to burn waste with minimal emissions. And get hot water in return. So thanks to our waste, the homes of residents of Brovary, a city near Kyiv with a population of more than 100,000 people, are warm. In the future, the Zhytomyr plant plans to install a turbine and generate electricity for the needs of the townspeople. So there is already a queue for our waste.

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Just like at home, we want to make our production completely waste-free. So we are working to find a way to recycle half of our waste that we currently send for disposal. We don't have a ready-made solution yet. Even before the full-scale Russian invasion, we planned to develop our recycling business and start manufacturing finished products from pellets, such as buckets, furniture fittings, or scissor handles. Now it is temporarily on hold, but we plan to return to this project in the near future.  

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The processing business can be successful - and we are not the only ones who understand this. Today, there are about 100 companies in Ukraine engaged in various activities. For example, wood waste, leaves and grass are partially processed into fuel briquettes and even exported to the EU. Waste paper is used to make corrugated cardboard sheets, and later boxes, cardboard, and paper. Scrap metal can be used to make nails. And the number of people willing to engage in this type of activity is only growing - even now, projects are being developed and a dozen new businesses are being built across the country.

Ukraine has a chance to recycle all its waste and clean up its landfills. I remember when I first saw a car in Switzerland collecting specific waste, such as paper, plastic, or organic waste. In our cities, you can often see how different containers where waste is packaged are all poured into one car that goes to the landfill. This practice needs to be changed. Just as we need to explain to consumers that they need to wash their plastic bottles before recycling them. It is not easy to create the right waste management culture, but Ukrainians love everything new and I think they will pick up new trends. However, this requires government support.  

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