The situation of reservoir pollution is critical in Ukraine!
The Dnieper River is annually contaminated with tons of garbage and emissions from different enterprises. Most people know about this problem but keep throwing away garbage and polluting our wonderful river.
There are a lot of beach areas near the river and waste affects our health. Together we can not only clean the riverfront but also get out trash of the river on canoes in the sports rhythm.
Our journalists talked to the organizers of the action, SD Platform non-governmental organization, and discovered all the details.
“Sometimes we see our Dnieper river through rose-colored spectacles. But putting them off, we can notice how much dirt, plastics and strange things are in the river. We have gathered activists who care about its destiny. We made the Dnieper cleaner on our own,” Kateryna Davydkova, a coordinator of the environmental sector at SD Platform, said.
Plastics, bottles, toys and even stolen stuff are just a brief list of the “treasure” found by activists in the Dnieper. This garbage was left by common vacationers who don’t want to keep the Dnieper clean.
“We found a bag with car and apartment keys, a purse, personal documents and bank cards. Without losing any time, we found the owner of lost things via Facebook and returned them the next day. The things have been in the water for more than a year. Thus, the environmental action is referred not just to reservoir rescue, but also to good deeds like in this case,” Said Mechkour, a foreign student of International European University, added.
Be eco-friendly conscious! If you like resting near the Dnieper, throw away your trash in a garbage can so that other activists won’t find your “treasure”.
Let’s make our river cleaner by small but progressive steps!
ALLA NAVOLOKINA, ECOLOGY, FRANZ_VLADIMIR_FON_GABSBURG_LOTHRINGEN, IEU
According to the results of screening of the main rivers of Ukraine: Dnieper, Dniester, Siversky Donets, the state of water in the country is not worse than its neighbors in Europe, Deputy Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine Mykhailo Khorev said in a Sunday interview with Dim TV.
“There’s really nothing to be afraid of yet. We can’t say that our condition is much worse than our neighbors in Europe […] We fix, say, metals, but we don’t actually have mercury in the water, very well. And in European rivers there is such a problem, and they are actively fighting it. The Slovaks who did our screening were satisfied with the result. They said that in general your rivers are in a much better condition than everyone thinks about them,” the deputy minister said.
Khorev also said that there were traces of COVID pharmaceuticals in the water. Pills and injections used by Ukrainians are excreted from the body and sooner or later fall into the water.
He said that “the same thing is happening in Europe, there are good modernized cleansing facilities, but there are also old ones. Even the leading countries – Germany and France – have not reached good water state.”
Sem Ecopack LLC (Tomakivka, Dnipropetrovsk region), part of Effective Investments Group, intends to invest about UAH 170 million in the creation of a new production of ecological cardboard packaging Sem Ecopack in Sambir (Lviv region) with a capacity of 150 million units of packaging products per year.
“The new production will appear on the site of the former bakery. Sem Ecopack LLC has acquired the real estate of the plant from Khlibprom Concern,” the press service of Effective Investments told Interfax-Ukraine.
Sambir bakery was part of Khlibprom concern (associated with founder of OKKO Group Vitaliy Antonov) and was closed in 2018 by the decision of the management of the concern.
The press service of the group noted that at the first stage Sem Ecopack plans to invest about UAH 70 million in the restoration of the existing production complex and more than UAH 100 million during the next stages. The new production facility in Sambir is planned to be commissioned in early 2022.
“I hope that in a year Facebook will remind me of these ruins, and I will show you an already operating production here! An inspiring story when you can build a European-level enterprise from the ruins with the export of products to Europe,” head of the group’s supervisory board Ihor Liski wrote on Facebook, accompanying the post with photographs of the premises of the former bakery in Sambir.
According to the press service, currently Sem Ecopack LLC, established in 2014, is developing two areas: the production of ecological packaging and mechanical engineering, while the engineering direction uses more than 80% of Ukrainian components.
The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has appointed Deputy Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources Iryna Stavchuk as Deputy Head of the Ministry for European Integration, government spokesman in the Verkhovna Rada Vasily Mokan said.
According to the statement, the relevant decision was made at a government meeting on Wednesday.
In addition, the government appointed Deputy Head of the State Service of Ukraine for Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre Oleksandr Krasnolutsky as Deputy Head of the Ecology Ministry.
The State Service of Ukraine for Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre said on its website that Krasnolutsky served as Deputy Head of the department since February 20, 2019
