Environment minister: Waste sent to landfills must drop from 80% to 20%

Environmental Protection Minister Gila Gamliel on Wednesday set a target for the next ten years of reducing the amount of waste sent to landfills from the current “outrageous” 80 percent to a 20% maximum.

At a changeover ceremony Wednesday for outgoing ministry director-general Guy Samet and his replacement David Yahalomi, Gamliel said that as of 2017, many countries, among them Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, Japan, Norway, Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden, were no longer burying any waste in the ground. It took Switzerland just a decade, from 2007, to move from 50% waste burial to zero, she said.

“We have to reach these standards,” Gamliel said. “We can bring Israel — which today buries 80% — it’s outrageous — to 20%, at most, over the coming decade and to zero in the long term.”

The Environmental Protection Ministry currently receives more than NIS 1 billion ($290 million) per year from waste burial fees and some NIS 2.5 billion ($730 million) have already been amassed in the ministry’s Fund for the Maintenance of Cleanliness, she went on. These funds could be used for a “revolution” in waste management.

“On the day that zero shekels go into the fund, we’ll know that we’re on the right track, ” she said.

David Yahalomi said that under his directorship, the ministry would push for a circular economy and make Israelis “take responsibility for the culture of consumption and the waste that it produces.” The ministry would encourage the development of cleantech and fight polluters.

Israel is behind other developed nations when it comes to pollution caused by transport, energy and waste, he added, and there was no reason for the country to stay that way.

Shortly after entering office, Gamliel froze ministry policy to build waste incinerators and ordered a new review into the controversial practice.