Sofia Municipality announces the start of the competition procedure for separate waste collection in Sofia

The Sofia Municipality has officially announced the start of a competition for the conclusion of 5-year contracts for organizing systems for separate collection of packaging waste on the territory of the city. The invitations to the licensed organizations are the result of intensive preliminary talks over the past months, led by Deputy Mayor for Ecology Nikolay Nedelkov, the press center of the Sofia Municipality reports.
„The official announcement of the invitations is the next step we have reached after a constructive and operational dialogue with the recovery organizations, for which I thank them. In the conversations over the past months, we have managed to outline clear opportunities for improving the quality of the service in Sofia, with one thing leading us throughout – to protect the public interest and provide citizens with a more convenient, accessible and working recycling system. With this invitation, we open the next page of the process and move on to real actions.“ commented Deputy Mayor for Ecology Nikolay Nedelkov.
The invitation issued by the Sofia Municipality covers four separate groups, in which all 24 administrative districts of the city are distributed. Candidates must present detailed and well-thought-out programs for waste management from both households and commercial establishments, establishments and administrative buildings. The texts of the invitations place a clear emphasis on the detailed description of the technical characteristics of the containers and means of transport, the frequency of collection, as well as the conduct of innovative information and explanatory campaigns in a public environment without the distribution of non-ecological paper flyers.
With the publication of the invitations, the official administrative process by law is also triggered. The utilization organizations have a two-week deadline, and applications for participation together with detailed programs must be submitted to the Sofia Municipality registry office no later than 5:00 p.m. on June 12, 2026. During this time, a specialized expert commission will be formed by order by the municipality, which will have the task of examining, analyzing and evaluating the submitted concepts in detail. After completing its work, the commission will prepare a detailed report, which will be submitted for approval by the Mayor of Sofia, Vasil Terziev. The final step envisages that the finished draft contracts will be presented to the Standing Committee on Environmental Protection, Agriculture and Forestry of the Sofia Municipal Council, after which they will be officially signed.
The Sofia Municipality emphasizes that the specific parameters of the future cooperation, the exact number of colored containers, the schedules for their placement in neighborhoods will be officially announced only after the full finalization of the administrative procedure and the official signing of the contracts.