Remarks on USAID Recycling Project

Remarks of USAID Mission Director, Edward T. Landau
Tirana Clean Up Day
Tirana, May 19, 2007

Honorable Mayor,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Volunteers and students,

Congratulations! Your hard work has helped take a first step for recycling and a cleaner Tirana.

Sanitation may not be the most glamorous subject, but it touches a core principle of good governance that is relevant in every corner of the world. Good governance is a compact between elected officials and citizens to work under a common set of rules toward a common purpose.

Whether that common purpose is as lofty as joining the EU or as immediate as living and working in a clean, safe urban environment, it requires a unity of purpose between people and government. 

While cities can improve their services, basic disposal of trash is also an individual choice.  

The US Government, through USAID, has several programs to strengthen Albania’s democratic institutions, spur economic growth, and improve social services. One of USAID’s largest programs focuses on Albania’s decentralization process, and in particular, assisting local governments deliver  services to citizens and create a better investment climate.

For several years, USAID has worked with 40 municipalities, including Tirana, to help them utilize revenues and resources to deliver the services that people can see and feel are of higher quality—services like street and sidewalk repair, maintenance of city parks, street lighting, and sanitation.

This Clean-Up Day is the beginning of what we expect will be a city-wide recycling partnership between interested businesses and citizens residing in neighborhoods like the Television Block area to collect recyclable materials – bottles, cans, paper – and work with the city to transport them to a facility where those materials can be reclaimed and reused.

Clean-Up Day is a single day event. But this project has a longer-term vision of the City’s commitment to better waste collection and disposal; and to see this pilot recycling program to completion and replicating it widely.

Most of all we hope that Tirana citizens will also begin to see that they can play and important role, by virtue of the fact that they live and work here, in contributing to a cleaner, healthier city.

I’d like to give a special thanks to the volunteers, organizers of this event in the municipality of Tirana, the students of Jordan Misja School who volunteered their time and musical talents, and to the city officials from the U.S. state of North Carolina.

I am confident that over time you will see your labor bear fruit in the form of a rational waste collection and disposal plan for the City, greater citizen awareness of and involvement in  sanitation and recycling issues, and, most important of all, a cleaner city for you and your families to enjoy.