Reader’s opinion|Municipalities have a statutory obligation to take care of their residents’ waste management, and they cannot shirk this responsibility.
Recycling Industry Association managing director Mia Nores took a stand in favor of amending the procurement act (HS Opinion 27.9.). It is necessary to specify the claims made about municipal waste management.
In the first place the vast majority of municipalities, i.e. more than 260 municipalities, consider it expedient to organize their municipal waste services in cooperation. Waste management is an industry based on a local operating model. Municipalities located at a suitable distance from each other have formed meaningful entities in order to cope with significant investment needs. Significant infrastructure investment needs have acted as a driver for the municipalities’ voluntary cooperation, because the municipalities alone would not have been able to cope with the significant investments required for the development of waste management.
Municipalities have a statutory obligation to take care of their residents’ waste management, and they cannot shirk this responsibility. In addition, the legislator has deemed it necessary that the municipality also acts as a stern board for the limited waste management needs of business life (the so-called TSV service) in service shortage situations. A significant amount of different types of waste remain outside the obligation to organize municipal waste management on the free market.
Ruling The form of cooperation is a waste management company jointly owned by the municipalities and operating as a related unit. The critical, reasonable and cost-effective customer mass of the waste management market is made up of several municipalities. The 30 municipalities mentioned by Nores that manage their waste management alone and tender their services would not be able to survive in the current operating environment without the processing capacity invested by the cooperative municipalities. Several private companies that provide waste management services to these municipalities rely on the processing infrastructure of municipal waste management companies for their services.
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Waste management is an industry based on a local operating model.
It is ironic that, according to reports, the major users of TSV services are private waste management companies, which criticize municipal companies for providing TSV services. Business organizations have been staunch advocates of retaining that obligation. A separate procedure has been set up for the transparent investigation of a lack of service, which aims to ensure that the service is not used incorrectly. Thus, free use of the service is not possible.
What comes to the planned change in the Procurement Act regarding the minimum ownership share of related entities, no control challenges related to ownership shares have been detected in municipal waste management. From the point of view of the waste industry, it remains completely unclear what issue would be tried to be solved by limiting ownership in that case. Municipalities must continue to have the opportunity to organize their statutory waste management services within the framework of their self-governance in the way they deem appropriate, alone or in cooperation with suitable municipal entities. Even now, the value of the services acquired by municipal waste management companies from private companies in accordance with the normal procurement procedure is considerable.
Tuulia Innala
special expert, Confederation of Municipalities
The reader’s opinions are speeches written by HS readers, selected and edited by the HS editorial board. You can leave an opinion piece or familiarize yourself with the principles of the pieces at www.hs.fi/kiryotamielipidekeisuis/.
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