Digitization of Comprehensive Waste Management.
Decree 41525-S " Regulation for the digital processing of records and authorizations of the Ministry of Health in the integral management of waste in the SINIGIR platform " recently came into force , whose greatest novelty is to order all companies with a physical establishment to register and keeping a comprehensive waste management plan digitally updated.
Both for incorporation into the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and to comply with the Sustainable Development Goals set by the General Assembly of the United Nations Organization (UN), Costa Rica must adapt its internal legislation to a series of regulations, international standards and good practices aimed at sustainable production and consumption. And it is precisely for this reason that a digitized registration system is established that seeks to make Comprehensive Waste Management much faster and more transparent.
The most important changes imposed by the new Decree 41525-S are the following:
- The duty to register and annually update the waste management plans is established. These plans are a necessary requirement to obtain the Sanitary Operating Permit required by all work establishments to operate legally, therefore, any company that has a physical headquarters must enter the information into the SINIGIR system and update it before March every year.
- Authorizations to import goods whose waste is considered special handling and the records of authorized managers will be made virtually. For any application before the SINIGIR, it will be automatically verified if the applicant company has the current Sanitary Operating Permit.
- Additionally, for the authorization of importation of special handling goods, a compliance unit must be created, which is a mechanism to ensure that importing companies will be responsible for the special waste generated by the goods they bring into the country. Under the new decree, such compliance units must register and report their activities, also virtually.
- It is established that all requests must be reviewed by the Ministry of Health within a period of 10 business days. In the event that it is determined that the documentation is incomplete, the applicant will be informed of this situation, and will have 10 working days to correct any lack. After that, the Ministry of Health will have 3 days to resolve the request.
- Municipalities, which by law must have a comprehensive solid waste management plan, must now register them with the SINIGIR system managed by the Ministry of Health. This is an encouraging novelty, because in practice, few Municipalities have such plans and therefore many fail to manage waste recycling and revaluation. Under this new scheme, the Ministry of Health will be able to monitor that the Municipalities comply with their legal duty to have updated waste plans.