The story about Sofia's refuse started in the distant summer of 2005 when the population of the suburb of Suhodol started the first protests against the pollution caused by the waste disposal site there. In autumn 2005 the landfill site was closed and for several months it seemed like Sofia's waste would be left in and around the large rubbish bins all over the city, until the smell and infections killed everyone.

Eventually the city started storing the waste in several new sites, initially at provisional sites in Kremikovtsi, Mramor, Novi Han, Suhodol and other nearby villages.

In 2007 Sofia municipality agreed on conditions to store the rubbish in the Plovdiv village of Tsalapitsa and in the town of Karlovo. Those agreements expired, however, when the agreed volumes of waste had been sent and the city once again faced the same problems as in 2005.

Because of the lack of a permanent and sustainable decision on how to handle the city's rubbish, on November 15 2007 Sofia city councillors voted to re-open Suhodol landfill. Immediately there were protests by local residents, environmentalists and members of the eco parties Ecoglasnost and the Green Party (GP).

Ecoglasnost deputy chairman Petar Penchev told The Sofia Echo that new civil committees had been conceived as a result of the saga of Sofia's rubbish. A committee was established in each of the relevant areas: in the areas of villages Mramor, Novi Han, Trebich, Kremikovtsi, Seslavtsi and Suhodol. "This is a new stage of the ecological movement in Bulgaria, which in today's situation fights solely for the protection of local land, air or other issues," Penchev said.

When the refuse crisis started, initially the committees were separate from each other. Then, when they saw that the waste was baled in one place and then stored at another, and that the law was being broken at both places as the refuse processing sites were established without environmental impact assessments (EIA), the committees united. At that time Ecoglasnost served as a co-ordination centre, supporting all committees individually. But when they started an initiative for common actions, together with all the committees, Ecoglasnost started, and still is pursuing, six cases against different authorities connected to the refuse problems.

A letter, issued in December 2005 by the Ministry of Environment and Water Affairs (MOEW), said that no EIA was necessary for the original temporary areas. This resulted in the situation of storing and bailing rubbish at the different sites near Sofia. Based on MOEW's decision, in 2006, Sofia municipality opened two rubbish dumps, in Kremikovtsi village and Drouzhba district.

"When in 2007 Boiko Borissov (Sofia mayor) quoted this letter, 13 organisations (including Ecoglasnost, the ecological organisations and the initiative committees) initiated proceedings against this decision," Penchev said. Since then the court has passed it to several different bodies, moving it from a five-judge panel, to a three-judge panel and in the end returned it to Sofia Administrative Court.

The case was scheduled for January 28 but was again delayed because MOEW issued a statement saying that their 2005 letter was not valid because, as the institution now claimed, the letter was not an official statement but only a recommendation. However, based on this "recommendation" for three years Sofia city had already stored and baled waste illegally at different sites around the area of the municipality that had no EIA.

The European Union warned Bulgaria that it could impose sanctions over the issue. The ecological movement had been right all along. For each and every site used for waste processing, public hearings were necessary. The hearings are organised to discuss the EIA after it is prepared.

At the end of January the EU said there would be sanctions for the violations that took place over the previous three years. However, it would not punish Sofia municipality or its mayor, but the whole of Bulgaria.

On January 20, in a letter calling for a protest at Suhodol, the Suhodol association "Protection of the health and life of the population and the environment" said: "We are evidence of an ugly lie that was used to manipulate the Bulgarian public. Swindlers from the Cabinet and Sofia municipality lied about a decision that does not exist. The aim was to open the illegal depot near Suhodol, which they achieved. Police and gendarmerie were used against peaceful Bulgarians in favour of a particular circle of companies that gravitate around the Sofia mayor." The letter asked whether Suhodol population would allow their children to become ill and to be ashamed of their parents' inactivity. According to the association, future generations would judge their parents for their decisions if they did not take any action to protect the local environment and their health.

During the protest that took place the next day, Suhodol residents said they agreed they wanted to separate from Sofia municipality and become a separate municipality.
In November 2007 the GP issued a media statement, saying that the party was troubled by the decision of Sofia city council, taken on November 15, to re-open Suhodol landfill site. According to the GP, the decision was result of "the complete lack of action by Sofia city and mayor Borissov during the past few years". Evidence for the inaction was the fact that during the past three years in the city did not come up with a proposal for a permanent and sustainable solution to the problem of Sofia's waste. The GP said further that the decision in question was rash and in violation of the existing legislation.

The local Greens reminded Sofia municipal council and Borissov that they could not open Suhodol landfill without issuing a complex permit for the refuse storage site, which was a "categorical requirement of European legislation".

In December protesters against the decision also gathered in front of Sofia's municipal buildings. At that time, the Suhodol protesters said police had again blocked their district and residents were not allowed freely in the landfill area.

Fortunately, at least part of the waste was not being sent to landfills, where it would not decompose because of the lack of oxygen. The recycling companies, such as Ecobulpack, Repack, Ecopack, Bulecopack and others, already collect paper, plastic, metal and glass waste from most Sofia districts, as reported by The Sofia Echo on December 14 2007.

Persistent organic pollutants
As well as the rubbish that can be seen daily, invisible pollutants contaminate Bulgaria's air and soil. These substances can be a serious problem to health for both people and animals.

The United Nations Development Programme's Global Environmental Facility (GEF) organised a seminar on January 31 and February 1 to educate the Bulgarian media on the hidden hazard of persistent organic pollutants (pops). GEF provided total financing of $63 900 for two projects on pops in Bulgaria: the national campaign "POPS - The unknown danger", managed by Bluelink environmental internet website, and "Doesn't cost anything but causes a lot", managed by Misionis association. The two campaigns united and are currently working under the same logo and with the same goals. The main aim is to inform society about the precautions they can take to avoid any exposure to the considerable threat to human health that pops might cause.

Pops are invisible toxic particles transmitted into the air by burning, for example, stubble in fields or rubbish at landfills site, or in skips, and tyres.

Stubble burning is widely used in Bulgaria to clear fields after the harvest and is believed to be beneficial for the soil. However, it actually does the opposite. It kills all living organisms up to a depth of five cm below the surface and turns the top layer of soil to ash. Simultaneously, the smoke emitted is toxic and should not be inhaled and the soil gets polluted with this as well.

In Bulgaria, burning rubbish in illegal landfill sites is a big problem. Such sites usually spontaneously combust as they are not managed in anyway and there are not safeguards in place. Any burning plastic, in particular, and other materials emit toxic gases that are dangerous to human health.

Skips and car tyres are also often set on fire throughout the country, usually by the poorer population and mostly during winter to provide heat.

Burning objects, such as cigarette ends, plastic packaging or bags in domestic fireplaces or in fires in the open also cause these emissions.

The so-called "dangerous dozen" of chemicals contains three main groups of pollutants: persistent chlorine-organic pesticides, industrial chemicals and pop emissions from unintentional production, generated by human activities.

It is the third group that is the one the campaigners are fighting against, and more precisely, against dioxins and furans.

According to data from 2003, 48.1 per cent of the dioxins and furans in Bulgaria were emitted by thermal power plants burning coal, 27.8 per cent from domestic fires and burning stubble, 13 per cent from industrial burning and 8.2 per cent from public transport and other vehicles.

The dioxins and furans have toxic properties, they are resistant to decomposition, accumulate in the biosphere and are carried in the air to distant locations. Those two groups of chemicals damage the environment and affect human health in various ways.

The dioxins and furans can enter the human body through inhaling air and dust particles, through contaminated soil, through the skin or by consumption of polluted food, which, for example, was grown in polluted soil. They accumulate in the fatty tissue of the body, through which they reach the blood and the milk of any women that are breastfeeding. Pregnant women appeared to be most vulnerable to the effects, followed by infants that are being breastfed.

In elderly people the dioxins and furans can cause dermal toxicity, changes in the functions of the liver and lipid metabolism and weight loss, as well as harming the immune, endocrine and nervous systems.

Such pollutants were reportedly transmitted during the war in Serbia, when, in 1999, the grape and other harvests along Bulgaria's north-western border died. The chemicals had been used to create a fog for aircraft to hide in while flying above the country.

Similar chemicals were used in the Vietnam War to deforest and to defoliate. As a result of this contamination, large areas of land were poisoned for years as the half-life of the dioxins ranges from seven to 11 years and for furans it is one to five years. The foetuses of many Vietnamese mothers were damaged because of this pollution, the BBC reported.

The Bulgarian Ministry of Environment and Water Affairs (MOEW) has developed a National Plan for the management of pops in Bulgaria, in co-operation with the United Nations Environmental Programme's international project (GF/2732-02-4454) and consultants from the Balkan Science and Research Centre on Ecology and Environmental Protection.

The plan includes measures for safely storing old toxic pesticides that have been banned, as well as making sure they have been taken out of usage and limiting the unintentional pops generated by different parts of Bulgaria's economy.

In August 2000 the state banned the usage of pops pesticides and started analysing soil taken from different parts of the country. Such pesticides were found in many abandoned fertiliser warehouses throughout the country. The chemicals were banned in the period between 1960 and 1990 but continued to be used illegally.
The pops pesticides found in the stores were packed into new barrels, labelled according to European requirements and transported to base platforms for storage, MOEW said during the seminar.

In addition, within a project called "Neutralisation of risk pesticides from Bulgaria in The Netherlands", 27 680 kg of pops pesticides were exported to the Netherlands from the regions around Sofia, Plovdiv, Shoumen and Bourgas. 

MOEW monitors the concentration of the pops dioxins and furans emitted by vehicles in several locations throughout Bulgaria. In Sofia filters have been placed near Gara Yana, Orlov Most (Eagle's Bridge) and in the Hipodrouma district. Similar filter were also installed in Pernik and Plovdiv. They are changed every six months. To use as a comparison, MOEW took a sample using an air probe from the Bankya region near Sofia, which claims to have cleanest air in Bulgaria. The investigation will last from February to December 2008 and the probes will then be send to a laboratory in the Czech Republic for analysis, as Bulgaria does not have the appropriate facilities.

This is the first time that an investigation of this kind has been carried out in Bulgaria. Once the results are published, hopefully the Government and municipalities will undertake some actions to reduce the pollution in the cities and all over Bulgaria.

 -     By not burning plastic
 -    By not burning car tyres or plastic bags
 -    By not burning forests and stubble
 -    By recycling rubbish
 -    By walking or riding bicycles instead of using a car
 -    By less wood for heating
 -    By using renewable energy sources