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Air & ecologyWorsening

Waste & landfill

Nubarashen landfill, recycling

Yerevan sends ~1,000–1,300 tonnes of unsorted waste a day to a single unlined 1950s dump at Nubarashen that periodically catches fire on its own. There is no working citywide recycling — sorting is done informally by waste-pickers instead.

Waste collection truck on a Yerevan street
Photo: Palickap · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
Pressure index · since 195489
harm
4/5
reach
4/5
trajectory
Worsening
entrenchment
72 years
Evidence: well-documented

How it began

Structurally baked in

Before. The Nubarashen dump opened in the 1950s without any permitting — effectively an improvised landfill on the city's edge. For decades all of the city's waste was hauled to that one unlined, unsorted site, and no one treated it as a problem — just the way trash disappeared.

What changed. Recurring fires and official pollution readings turned a decades-normalized dump into a recognized 'toxic bomb' at the city's edge.

Timeline

  1. Origin

    Nubarashen landfill opens without permits

    The dump opened in the 1950s without permits on Yerevan's south-eastern edge. Since then it has grown to roughly 52.3 hectares and accumulated about 8 million tonnes of waste — with no base lining and no landfill-gas capture.

  2. Decision

    Waste collection is handed to international operator Sanitek

    Lebanon's Sanitek S.A.R.L. won the city's international tender and began collecting waste in central Yerevan, with plans to expand to other districts and a stated ~€10M invested in European trucks and bins. This contract is where the whole Sanitek saga begins.

    Yerevan Municipality · Sanitek Armenia

  3. Decision

    Yerevan signs a €26M contract to replace Nubarashen

    City Hall signed a €26M agreement with the EBRD, EIB and E5P — the 'Yerevan Solid Waste Project' was meant to close Nubarashen and build a sanitary landfill in its place.

    Yerevan Municipality

  4. Development

    Garbage collapse: Sanitek Armenia fails to keep up

    City contractor Sanitek Armenia stopped keeping up with collection — bins went unemptied for days and trash piled up across the city for over a year.

    Sanitek Armenia

  5. Legal

    Sanitek is first to launch pre-arbitration against the state

    Two months before the city terminated the contract, Sanitek itself launched a formal pre-arbitration process against the government — the dispute escalated from the contractor's side first.

    Sanitek Armenia

  6. DecisionWin

    Mayor Marutyan unilaterally terminates the Sanitek contract

    After a year of complaints over uncollected trash, Mayor Hayk Marutyan unilaterally terminated the Sanitek Armenia contract — a rare case of the city firing its own waste-collection contractor.

    Hayk Marutyan · Sanitek Armenia

  7. Development

    Damage to the city put at ~5.31 billion dram — no suspects

    A year after termination, the Prosecutor General's office put the damage to Yerevan from the Sanitek affair at about 5.31 billion dram (plus 580 million dram in unpaid taxes) — with no suspects named and nothing recovered.

  8. LegalOngoing

    Sanitek files an international arbitration claim against Armenia

    Sanitek filed an investment-treaty claim at international arbitration (ICSID, World Bank Group) against Armenia and Yerevan municipality, seeking over $25M and alleging discriminatory and expropriatory conduct — the costly reckoning for the termination.

    Sanitek Armenia · Yerevan Municipality

  9. DevelopmentLoss

    A major Nubarashen fire burns for about 10 days

    A fire at the dump burned for about 10 days, blanketing Yerevan in smoke. Self-combustion is routine for a landfill this old with no gas-capture system.

  10. DevelopmentLoss

    City Hall scraps the Nubarashen-replacement project

    In July 2024 Mayor Tigran Avinyan declared the project dead: across nearly 10 years the promised EBRD/EU/E5P financing (~€26M) never arrived and the construction tender drew no bidders. The city said it was now discussing a new project with the World Bank; the sanitary landfill was never built and the dump keeps operating. Ecologist Inga Zarafyan (EcoLur) publicly doubted the 'no bidders' explanation.

    Tigran Avinyan · Yerevan Municipality

  11. DevelopmentLoss

    The dump burns again for several days

    A major Nubarashen fire burned for several days — roughly 3 of the site's 52 hectares ablaze, extinguished with about 150 truckloads of soil and ~500 tonnes of water. One more fire between the 2023 and 2025 episodes.

  12. Update

    Fire recurs: pollution readings 15-20x the WHO limit

    The dump caught fire again. Official readings showed pollutant concentrations 15-20 times the WHO limit — one more confirmation that the city's 'toxic bomb' remains unresolved.

  13. DecisionOngoing

    Mayor Avinyan announces the city's first waste-recycling plant

    Amid the renewed fire, Mayor Tigran Avinyan announced plans to build Yerevan's first solid-waste recycling plant — the first time the city has committed to industrial recycling rather than just landfilling.

    Tigran Avinyan · Yerevan Municipality

Promises & what happened

Connections

  • AmplifiesAir pollution

    Dump fires and the decomposition of unsorted waste release combustion byproducts and landfill gas into the city's air — a direct contribution to Yerevan's already-critical air pollution.

Money

Key facts

Daily waste
~1,000-1,300 t/day
Accumulated at Nubarashen
~8 million tonnes
Fire pollution (Aug 2025)
15-20x the WHO limit

Sources