Philip Morris tobacco company announced the beginning of recycling electronic devices that the company sells in Ukraine: IQOS, IQOS VEEV and lil.
“Users can return the old device at any IQOS Space store. From there, the electronics are sent for recycling to Philip Morris’s international partner Flextronics International Kft. (Hungary),” the company said in a statement.
According to it, about 608,000 products have already been received for recycling from Ukraine to Hungary, in particular devices, holders and chargers for devices that the company has collected thanks to exchange programs.
The company indicated that it is possible to hand over used sticks, pods, cartridges and even electronic cigarettes from other manufacturers for recycling; their utilization is provided by the Ukrainian partner of Philip Morris – Waste Management Center LLC.
Philip Morris International previously announced its goal to recycle 100% of its smokeless devices by 2025 and reduce plastic waste from its products by 50%. In 2020, the company achieved 84% recycling of IQOS devices (percentage of the weight of each device).
The mobile operator Vodafone Ukraine plans to expand its frequency portfolio in 2022, CEO of Vodafone Ukraine Olha Ustynova has said.
“Given the constant organic growth of traffic, we plan to expand our frequency portfolio as much as possible. We expect that additional frequencies will enable us to provide the transmission of traffic that is growing [by 17-18% quarterly],” she said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
Ustynova also stressed that the operator’s priority for 2022 is the fulfillment of licensing conditions for covering 90% of the population and cities with 2,000 inhabitants and more with 4G technologies.
“We must complete this stage in June. We have been building very actively last year. If last year our 4G coverage geography had 68%, then by the end of 2021 we will reach 83% of the population. In order to fulfill our obligations on coverage figures, we are left with a few percentages, while they are the most labor-intensive,” the CEO of Vodafone Ukraine said.
According to her, the operator has practically completed coverage of cities with a population of 2,000 or more residents – only isolated cases remain. “To reach the indicator of 90% of the population, we have to cover many small villages, each of which brings us one tenth of a percent closer to the target figure. The plans for the next year also include active construction on the roads of national importance,” Ustynova said.
Another big project of Vodafone Ukraine for 2022 will be to improve coverage in new buildings in Kyiv.
Vodafone Ukraine is the second largest mobile operator in Ukraine.
The Verkhovna Rada Committee on the Organization of State Power, Local Self-Government, Regional Development and Urban Planning recommended the parliament to adopt at the second reading bill No. 5655 on reforming the sphere of urban planning, co-author of the bill, head of the coordination council for solving problematic issues in urban planning, MP Olena Shuliak wrote on Facebook.
“For many months, together with all market participants, we have analyzed each of 2,000 edits in detail and publicly, took into account the comments, and heard the recommendations. Even the NACP confirmed after the analysis: No. 5655 takes into account the requirements of the Anti-Corruption Strategy 2021-2025,” she said.
Earlier, Shuliak reported that the bill on urban planning reform could be adopted by the end of 2021.
As reported, on July 1, 2021, the Verkhovna Rada adopted draft law No. 5655 at the first reading.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has imposed sanctions on two Ukrainian TV channels, namely, Pershyi Nezalezhnyi and UkrLive, the presidential press service said in a statement.
“To endorse the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) resolution dated December 28, 2021, ‘On special personal economic and other restrictions (sanctions)’,” the presidential order said.
In particular, the president endorsed the NSDC resolution regarding sanctions on Novyny Media Holding, Time Media, and Teleprostir.
The order takes effect on the publishing date.
From now on, Ukrainian officials will be prohibited from issuing any licenses and allowing use of radio frequencies in Ukraine to the sanctioned channels.
Legal entities owning the channels will be prohibited from conducting financial operations in the Ukrainian territory and using accounts in Ukrainian banks.
The sanctions will be valid for five years.
Ukrainian transport companies carried almost 2.428 billion passengers in January-November 2021, which is 3.5% more than in the same period in 2020, the State Statistics Service reported.
The passenger turnover of transport companies amounted to 57.4 billion passenger-kilometers in January-November 2021, which is 27.5% more than in 2020.
According to the State Statistics Service, 75 million passengers used railway transport during the specified period (including city train traffic), which is 19.6% more than in January-November 2020, and 999.4 million passengers (0.8% more) used road transport services.
Air transport increased passenger traffic by 92.3%, to 8.7 million people.
In addition, according to the State Statistics Service, over 11 months of 2021, some 364 million passengers used trams (5.8% less versus January-November 2020), 437.2 million (17.7% more) used subway, and 542.8 million (2.7% more) used trolleybuses.
During the specified period, water transport carried 500,000 passengers (51.1% more).
As noted by the State Statistics Service, the figures are given without taking into account the temporarily occupied territory of Crimea, Sevastopol and part of Donetsk and Luhansk regions not controlled by the government.
TIU Canada (Ekotechnik Nikopol) dismantled the equipment of its solar power plant in Nikopol due to an unresolved conflict with Nikopol Ferroalloy Plant (NFP), according to a material on the Voice of America website.
According to Michael Yurkovich, CEO of TIU Canada, after the solar power plant was disconnected from the power grid in March 2020, followed by its downtime and a number of negative court decisions, the owners of NFP offered to sell the plant to them for a pittance, after which it was decided to dismantle it.
“This situation is not unique for the last two years in this country. The governments of the world, other overseas investors, people in the diaspora must admit that this situation does not only affect TIU – it affects many businesses and is getting worse, and we no longer want to play this game,” he said.
As reported, on March 2, 2020, NFP completely disconnected a 10.5 MW solar power plant from Ekotechnik Nikopol LLC (TIU Canada) from the power grid. TIU Canada noted that NFP took advantage of the fact that the SPP was connected to a substation located on its territory, and explained the need for shutdown by repair work.
TIU Canada has been operating in Ukraine since 2016. The company put into operation a 10.5 MW SPP in Nikopol in January 2018, and an 11 MW SPP in Mykolaiv region in April 2019. In addition, TIU Canada launched a 33 MW SPP in Odesa region. The company’s investments in solar energy, which became the first investor in Ukraine under the Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Area Agreement (CUFTA), amounted to over $65 million.
Nikopol Ferroalloy Plant is controlled by EastOne Group, established in autumn 2007 as a result of restructuring of Interpipe Group, and Privat Group, both based in Dnipro.
