FBA EAC Discusses Waste Recycling and Environmental Control
On June 17, 2026, a meeting of the Committee on Industry was held at the FBA EAC headquarters. The session was attended by Alexander Kotlyarsky, First Vice President of the Association and Chairman of the Committee on Industry, and Sergey Korotkov, Advisor to the President of the FBA EAC and Senior Advisor to the UNIDO Centre in the Russian Federation.
The primary focus of the meeting was industrial waste recycling, specifically technologies for sludge treatment, wastewater purification, and solid waste disposal. Without addressing the issue of accumulated waste, any technological advancements remain purely theoretical; therefore, the meeting addressed the risks associated with sludge storage facilities. Accumulated waste poses a threat of dam failures at these facilities, while the evaporators currently in use are excessively energy-intensive. According to Alexander Kotlyarsky, one viable alternative is to extract metals from the waste. Slags and non-ferrous metal processing waste retain a significant portion of the periodic table, ranging from nickel to cobalt and rare earth elements.
Kotlyarsky emphasized that the Committee on Industry sees its role in identifying and supporting startups. He illustrated this with the example of young developers from a technical university who created a pilot plant for processing pulp materials using ceramic membranes. Despite achieving promising results, they were unable to continue the project because the required membranes were sourced from Europe, and they failed to find suitable analogs in China. Kotlyarsky noted that the Association is ready to assist such projects in sourcing the necessary components through its partner networks.
The discussion on waste recycling will continue in the near future with a roundtable on industrial waste management to be held at the FBA EAC platform. The focus will be on practical applications rather than theory: identifying which technologies have already proven their effectiveness, what barriers hinder their implementation, and how to foster cooperation among companies from different EAEU countries. Alexander Isaevich specifically highlighted the task of finding partners for joint projects to ensure that solutions do not remain localized but are applicable across the entire Eurasian space.