Majority of communities do not sort debris, and only third have sites for temporary storage, – survey results
Debris accounting in Ukraine is currently complicated due to the lack of a mechanism for determining their volumes. This is evidenced by the results of the extensive community survey conducted by the ReThink NGO (a member of the Ukraine Support Team coalition), as part of the development of methodological recommendations for the debris management.
Estimates of the Central executive authorities regarding the amount of debris sometimes differ tens of thousands of times: from 600 thousand to 15 billion tons. To have a deeper understanding of the real situation in communities, as well as to assess their ability to correctly account the data, a survey was conducted on the debris generation, their amount, and the types of materials used in construction. Our experts analyzed the communities’ responses and used them to develop methodological recommendations for determining the estimated amount of debris.
According to the responses of 159 communities, 40.25% have information about the building area of damaged objects; 61.01% know the number of floors; 49.06% have information on the total area of damaged objects. The rest do not have such information or have it partially, did not fill in the columns, or expressed assumptions.
Thus, in the Chernihiv and Kherson regions, documentation was lost in some communities as a result of active hostilities.
Stipulated by Cabinet Resolution No. 1073, the official sites for the temporary storage of debris (STS) were created in less than a third of the communities that participated in the survey.
At the same time, 33.33% of communities noted that they have untransported to the STS debris. The vast majority of communities – 78.62% (125 out of 159) – did not sort debris by type of materials. Only 8.18% (13 out of 159 communities) noted that they recorded information on the volumes of debris generation by object (address).
During the survey, we received responses from 257 communities from 19 regions of Ukraine (17.87% of the total). Communities from Sumy, Donetsk, and Lviv regions took the most active part in the survey.
No answers were received from the communities of the Volyn, Zakarpattia, Kirovohrad, Luhansk, and Mykolaiv regions.
In conducting the research, our specialists used and analyzed the data provided by 61.87% (159) communities since the rest indicated that they did not have destruction caused by the war or their questionnaires did not have enough information for analysis.
The survey results confirmed the ReThink NGO hypothesis that the debris accounting in Ukraine is based on general assumptions and not on actual or forecast information; it is not always possible to obtain high-quality statistical information on the volume and morphology of the generated waste. It is due to the fact that the state obliged communities to report monthly on the amount and component composition of debris (by Cabinet Resolution No. 1073) but did not provide them with a tool for calculating the volume of such waste.
This survey was conducted from February 28 to March 11, 2024, with the assistance of the Ministry for Community, Territories, and Infrastructure Development of Ukraine by the method of self-filling the questionnaire by respondents.
Project “Rethink: Recommendations for Debris Management on the Frontlines” is a part of the Ukraine Confidence Building Initiative, implemented with the support of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
