RECIKLIRAJ Igor Zgomba

Guest Igor ZgombaHosted by Boris ŽivkovićMay 3, 2026

Igor Zgomba

About this episode

What you'll hear in this conversation

The conversation with Igor Zgomba, director of the Zagreb Waste Management Center, quickly reveals a crucial gap in how we talk about waste. Zagreb has done the hard work of building out collection infrastructure — from thousands of green islands and household bins to nineteen recycling yards and two compost plants. Yet, a fundamental piece is still missing: the facilities to *process* that collected waste. Zgomba discusses the city's urgent focus on building sorting plants, bio-waste facilities, and a comprehensive Waste Management Center. This conversation offers a clear-eyed view of what it takes to transition a large city to a circular economy, from navigating EU funding cycles to confronting public resistance to modern waste-to-energy solutions.

Insights from the conversation

What to take from this episode

Zagreb has installed "more than a thousand green islands," household bins for paper, bio-waste, and mixed waste, plus nineteen recycling yards and two compost plants. The challenge for many cities isn't collecting waste separately, but having the downstream infrastructure to process it. Collection is only the first step; the real bottleneck is often what happens next.

The city is currently developing documentation for new sorting plants, bio-waste facilities, and a comprehensive Waste Management Center, which Zgomba describes as "a complex of several interconnected waste treatment buildings." Building a modern waste management system is not a single project, but a coordinated suite of interlinked facilities, each serving a specific purpose in the circular economy.

The documentation for Zagreb's Waste Management Center is 85% co-financed by the European Union, with Zagreb and the county paying only 5% of the nearly 19 million HRK cost. Significant EU funds are available for the foundational planning and development phases of large infrastructure projects, drastically reducing the local financial burden for upfront work.

Zgomba describes the timeline for documentation as 24 months, with an additional 10 months for EU application approval, because the project's value exceeds 50 million euros. Large-scale infrastructure projects, especially those co-funded by the EU, require immense patience and a long-term perspective, as planning and approval cycles can stretch for years.

"Everyone somehow shies away from thermal treatment," Zgomba notes, despite modern facilities not being "incinerators where waste is brought," but "energy plants where what cannot be treated in any other way is thermally processed." Public resistance to modern waste-to-energy facilities often stems from outdated perceptions and a lack of understanding that these plants process pre-treated fuel from waste, not raw garbage, producing energy safely.

Zgomba highlights that "495 energy plants currently operate in Europe," many "in city centers, for example Vienna or Copenhagen," processing "over 100 million tons of waste annually." The widespread and accepted integration of waste-to-energy in other European cities demonstrates that it is a proven, environmentally sound technology, not a distant or dangerous industrial process.

Zagreb is conducting "over thirty workshops" at markets and shopping centers, using TV and radio messages, and has distributed "animal-shaped sets for kindergartens" to teach children about waste sorting. Changing public habits and perceptions around waste requires a comprehensive, multi-channel education strategy, ideally starting with children to instill early habits and influence families.

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