River Pollution in Ukraine and Hungary Worsens in the Shadow of War
Crystal clear at its source in Ukraine, the Tisza river carries tons of plastic waste by the time it reaches Hungary. A new investigation shows how poor waste management in Transcarpathia, compounded by Russia’s war, has worsened the river’s pollution.
We are bumping along the dirt road in a worn-out military jeep in Transcarpathia, Western Ukraine, surrounded by mountains and dark pine forests. After an hour and a half of jolting, we happily climbed out of the UAZ jeep and reached the spring of the Black Tisza river. Our guide, Béla Francz, crosses himself, washes his face in the spring, and points to the water: “Taste it.” We drink from the crystal-clear water.
Four hundred kilometers downstream, competitors of the PET Cup river-cleaning environmental competition collect more than 400 large bags of trash from the Tisza every day. “Since the Russians are on the loose, green issues have naturally taken a back seat in Ukraine,” says one of the organizers, Attila Molnár.
However, plastic waste pollution in the Tisza river has been a problem in Hungary for about 20 years.
The Problem Starts at the Source of the River
“People have nowhere to put their trash. We have a municipal utility company, but they collect trash with a small flatbed UAZ truck. Can you really fit enough trash in such a car?” asks Béla Francz. “The company mostly employs retirees. Especially now due to the war, but even before that, because salaries are low. They go down a couple of streets and that’s it. Around here, they can only collect about 25 percent of the trash.”
According to Transcarpathia’s waste strategy, out of the county’s roughly 600 settlements, about 200, primarily in smaller villages, do not have an organized waste collection system. According to the Transcarpathian Regional Military Administration, there are 187,280 waste collection contracts registered in the region. The number of households exceeds 350,000.
Where garbage is not collected, people store it until the river floods. Then they throw it in. “We say that the water will carry it away,” says Béla. In the Yasinya area (Ясіня, Kőrösmező in Hungarian), the mandatory residential garbage fee barely covers the costs of the utility company, and some people don’t even pay for the service. Municipalities can impose fines, but they rarely do so.
Béla Francz, Yasinya / Kőrösmező (Transcarpathia, Ukraine). Photo: Átlátszó.
Until the recent Russian bombing of Mukachevo (Мукачево, Munkács), there has been peace in Transcarpathia. It is estimated that 130,000 to 350,000 people fled from the eastern parts of the Ukraine to the county, which had a population of 1.3 million before the war. As the population grows, so does the amount of waste.
Garbage Dump on the Banks of the Tisza
We say goodbye to Béla and continue our journey along the Tisza River. In the centers of the villages we pass through, we see portraits of soldiers who fell in the war. We are heading toward Rahiv (Рахів, Rahó), where the Black and White Tisza rivers converge on the outskirts of the town.
In this town of 15,000 inhabitants, garbage has been dumped directly on the banks of the Tisza since the 1970s, and today the waste covers an area of approx. 1 hectare. According to the four-level Ukrainian hazard classification, the Rahiv landfill belongs to category B (hazardous). This is also true of the vast majority of landfills in Transcarpathia. Moreover, a third of them are already overloaded, and 40 percent do not even comply with Ukrainian standards. Practically none of them meet European requirements.
According to a final court ruling on the matter, the Rahiv landfill should be closed down, but the law allows it to remain in use until another site is found, according to Deputy Mayor Ivan Moldavchuk. The difficulty is that roughly one-tenth of the county is a protected nature reserve or national park, where new landfills cannot be created.
Journalist Orsolya Fülöp at the landfill next to the Tisza, operated by the municipality of Rahiv / Rahó (Transcarpathia, Ukraine). Photo: Átlátszó.
We go from the mayor’s office straight to the landfill. The water of the Tisza is crystal clear, we can see the gravel riverbed. On the other side of the river, a huge hill of trash towers over an unfenced area. A truck drives in and dumps out a load of trash. A blonde woman walks into the picture, cigarette in her mouth. After smoking it, she flicks the burning butt onto the pile of rubbish.
The New Waste Treatment Plant Has Been Empty for Ten Years
Leaving Rahiv, we continue our journey towards Berehove (Берегове, Beregszász). We are slowly getting used to being stopped from time to time by soldiers with machine guns to check our documents. Actually, they are only interested in the papers of men – they couldn’t care less about women.
The waste situation in the whole Berehove district would change drastically if the new waste treatment plant finally became operational. The facility would be able to treat the waste of the entire district, with a population of 200,000, compliant with European standards. This would be vitally important because the current landfill is full and does not meet current safety requirements.
Landfill operated by the municipality of Berehove / Beregszász (Transcarpathia, Ukraine). Photo: Átlátszó.
The original plans included a complex waste treatment facility, which, in addition to a waste sorting plant, also included four waste disposal sites. Of these, only the sorting line was built, then the budget of €1 million funds ran out. Years later, the Tisza European Territorial Association, founded in 2015 by Hungarian and Ukrainian local and regional municipalities, secured additional EU funding to continue the project. The Hungarian government supplemented the €5 million grant with HUF 916 million (€ 2 million).
Finally the 2.5-hectare landfill and service facilities were built last summer. However, the operating license has not yet been obtained, so the entire waste treatment plant remains empty. The facility can only be accessed via a bumpy dirt road several kilometers long.
The empty waste treatment facility in Yanoshi / Makkosjánosi (Transcarpathia, Ukraine). Photo: Átlátszó.
Zoltán Babják, mayor of Berehove, tells us that repairing the road would cost more than one million euros, and that the municipality does not have the funds. According to the mayor, the main obstacle to the handover of the waste treatment plant are changes that have occurred since the original plans were made. Legal regulations and technical requirements have changed, moreover, the facility was also not built according to the plans and budget. For example, instead of the planned four landfills, only one is now ready.
So now only the wind whistles and the guard dogs bark at the facility. For the time being, that’s all there is of the 100 jobs the facility promised to provide to locals.
The empty waste treatment facility in Yanoshi / Makkosjánosi (Transcarpathia, Ukraine). Photo: Átlátszó.
When Weapons Are Fired, We Don’t Look for Recycling Bins
“I spoke with Béla, and he told me you were visiting him” Attila Molnár says by way of greeting. Molnár is one of the founders of the PET Cup competition. We’re meeting him two weeks after our initial field trip in Transcarpathia to the area where the Tisza river originates with crystal clear water. Downstream of the river and already in Hungary, PET Cup competitors collected a total of nine tons of waste from the Tisza between Balsa and Tiszadob this August alone.
This was after the local water management directorate captured incoming waste islands with its floating dredger during the flood in May. Their special machinery was first put into operation in 2019, and the same year a waste forecasting system was set up, consisting of six cameras at various points along the Tisza, both in Ukraine as well as in Hungary.
Floating dredger of the water management directorate. Photo: Átlátszó.
The fleet of machines was deployed about 10 times between 2019 and 2022, but this year there has only been one flood wave large enough to require its use. The water management authority collects 120-150 cubic meters of household waste from the river each year.
“There is so much plastic that cleaning would really be needed all year round,” says Attila Molnár. According to him, at least 3-4 tons of waste can be expected on every river kilometer. Roughly half of the waste comes from Ukraine, and the other half is brought in from Romania by the Tisza’s tributaries.
Boats collecting waste in the Tisza, PET Cup (Tokaj, Hungary). Photo: Átlátszó.
Eurofins Ltd. has been conducting tests on the Tisza for years, most recently taking samples in August. According to their results, the concentration of microplastics in the river has increased compared to previous measurements. “Microplastics can cause inflammatory processes in aquatic organisms, but their impact on human health is not yet fully understood,” says Dr. Gábor Bordós.
We contacted several major soft drink manufacturers to find out what role they are playing in solving the situation on the Tisza as it’s mostly their cans and bottles that contribute to the pollution. None of them responded.
Boats collecting waste in the Tisza, PET Cup (Tokaj, Hungary). Photo: Átlátszó.
Since the outbreak of war, both money and human resources have dwindled significantly in Ukraine. “The price of plastic has fallen and men are unavailable, therefore more waste is ending up in the river again,” says Attila Molnár.
This story is a medley of articles originally published in Hungarian on Átlátszó here, here and here.
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An economist, former policy director at an environmentally-focused think tank, Orsolya Fülöp was a freelancer at Magyar Narancs and Atlatszo. She specializes in investigating controversial environmental issues, from burning landfills to leaking nuclear power plants. She also manages Atlatszo’s international projects.