"Transparent" tender without open documentation: Mykolaiv once again embroiled in a waste scandal

In Mykolaiv, a competition to select the entity that will sort the waste generated in the city has been announced again. The plan concerns the construction and launch of a modern household waste sorting complex near the city’s municipal solid waste landfill.

This was reported by the Department of Housing and Communal Services of the Mykolaiv City Council. The organizer of the competition is the Department of Housing and Communal Services, which is located at: Mykolaiv, 7 Pavla Skoropadskogo St.

The city council calls this project one of the key community initiatives in the field of waste management. The main stated goal of the future complex is to significantly reduce the environmental burden on the municipal landfill and cut the volume of buried waste by 30%.

The problem is indeed critical for Mykolaiv. The current landfill has been operating for decades, and the city has for years been talking about the need for sorting, reclamation of the old landfill, and finding a site for a new one. Previously, city authorities openly admitted that if Mykolaiv does not start reducing disposal volumes, the MSW landfill could face the threat of shutdown.

At the same time, the new announcement contains a detail that immediately calls the stated “transparency” of the procedure into question. In the public notice, the city council emphasizes that the competition conditions have been refined and made more understandable for potential investors.

The Department of Housing and Communal Services of the Mykolaiv City Council states that the competition conditions were revised after previous attempts to launch the procedure.

“Profile services together with city council deputies carried out additional work and thoroughly revised the competition documentation. The updated conditions became clearer, more transparent, and adapted to the real financial and technical capabilities of potential investors.”

However, the full competition documentation was not posted in open access. The official announcement states that it will be provided to persons who contact the competition organizer with an application expressing their intent to participate. The documentation must be provided no later than within 2 working days from the moment such an application is received.

In practice this results in “transparency on request”: a potential participant can obtain the documents, while ordinary residents of Mykolaiv, journalists, the public and experts do not see the full package of conditions directly on the department’s website. For a project that concerns the city landfill, environmental safety, the future waste management system and potential revenues from waste, such a model looks at least unconvincing.

This is especially important given the previous history. The topic of a waste-sorting line in Mykolaiv has already been accompanied by scandals, searches, criticism of the competition conditions and questions to the companies that claimed the right to work with municipal waste. In 2025, law enforcement carried out searches at the city council and its structural units in the case concerning the waste sorting competition, which caused wide public resonance.

The current competition is scheduled for 15 July 2026 at 13:00 in the assembly hall of the Department of Housing and Communal Services at Mykolaiv, 7 Pavla Skoropadskogo St. Competition proposals can be submitted until 10:00 on 15 July 2026. The contact person listed in the announcement is the first deputy director of the Department of Housing and Communal Services, Ihor Ihorovych Nabatov, contact phone — 47-27-71.

The published part of the conditions provides for the evaluation of participants according to several criteria. These include the availability of equipment, a technical concept or investment program, timeframes for launching the complex, the percentage fee from revenue, experience in waste management, availability of a suitable land plot, the ability to partially or fully power the facility from alternative energy sources, technical staff and financial capacity.

The highest points for launch timeframes can be obtained if the participant guarantees full operation of the complex in less than 10 months. A timeframe from 10 to 14 months is scored at 6 points, and from 14 to 18 months — at 2 points.

The share of the fee from received revenue is evaluated separately. If a participant offers 20% or more, this gives the maximum 10 points. An offer of 11–19% is scored from 5 to 9 points, and 10% — at 4 points.

Participants must also confirm financial capacity. The announcement states that financial statements or similar documents must be provided, and participants must meet at least one of the criteria regarding sufficiency of equity, net operating cash flow or availability of funding sources for the investment project.

Against this background, the key question remains open: if the city council itself speaks of “transparency,” why is the full package of competition documentation not published immediately for everyone? After all, this is not a minor technical procurement but a strategic project that could determine how Mykolaiv handles waste in the coming years.

For residents of the Korabelnyi District this topic is also not abstract. It is municipal waste tariffs that are already hitting people. Earlier it was reported that for the communal enterprise KP “Obriy-DKP”, which serves, among others, the Korabelnyi District of Mykolaiv, the draft decision envisaged raising tariffs for bulky waste to UAH 1,153.83 per cubic meter, and for construction waste to UAH 1,170.64 per cubic meter.

Therefore, city residents have the right to know not only the attractive formulations about a modern station and reducing the burden on the landfill, but also the full conditions: who, for what money, for what term, on which land, with what equipment and with what share of revenues will work with Mykolaiv’s waste.

After previous sorting scandals, any non-transparency in this topic only increases distrust. Especially when authorities simultaneously talk about openness but leave the full competition documentation not for general access, but for those who separately submit an application to participate.

Earlier we wrote:

• The same waste, rising prices: a new tariff “surprise” is being prepared for Korabelnyi residents
• Mykolaiv may be left without an operational landfill: authorities urgently take up sorting
• Up to UAH 561 per cubic meter: Mykolaiv plans a sharp increase in the tariff for bulky waste
• Million-hryvnia trash bins: Mykolaiv purchased 200 new steel containers
• Scandal over waste sorting in Mykolaiv: deputies refused, the mayor complained about “Telegram trash”