Recycling Facility Opens in Varna, Bulgaria

07 July 2011 A BGN 50 million ($36.5 million) recycling facility has been inaugurated in the Black Sea city of Varna. The facility, which covers some 16,000 square meters and is capable of handling 140,000 tonnes of waste per year, is expected to have a 25 year life span. The funding for the project has been raised by a consortium operating under the name of Ecoinvest Assets, which claims the facility to be the first of its type in the country. Located 10 km to the east of Varna, in the village of Ezerovo, the new plant was opened by Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov and will employ 40 people to process household waste. The new facility is intended to process waste from the city of Varna, as well as several adjacent municipalities. The waste will be sorted using a combination of manual and automated systems according to its type. The operators say that they are intending to install an anaerobic digestor in the coming months to treat organic waste. The biogas will be used for electricity production to sustain the local facility. The factory was built in three months by Recycling Bulgaria, a Bulgarian company, in partnership with Germany company Eggersmann Anlagenbau. Recycling Bulgaria says that it is in talks with other Bulgarian municipalities for the construction of similar facilities. According to Bulgaria's National Waste Management Program, all municipalities with over 100 tonnes of waste annually are supposed to have similar waste processing plants.