LocationsWhere does the waste go? Inside Moldova and Ukraine’s circular experiments
December 18, 2025
A century ago, kitchens in Eastern Europe looked more circular than the systems that have now replaced them. Food peels became animal feed, scraps were fermented for gardens and almost nothing left a household as pure waste. Industrial packaging and later plastics introduced the concept that what we use once must be thrown away.
Today, across Moldova and Ukraine, entrepreneurs are returning to something older – but with modern tools, renewable energy, and digital platforms – turning waste into materials that can circulate again.
In both countries, the perception of waste is changing – no longer seen just as an environmental burden. It is turning into a source of raw material, of green jobs, of economic resilience at a time when fresh approaches are urgently needed. Through the BOOST: Green Futures Challenge, supported by UNDP and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland, 40 ventures from Ukraine and Moldova were selected to further develop their green, circular and low-carbon solutions over the course of a 10-week acceleration programme.
What they share is a belief that rebuilding after a crisis does not have to replicate the systems of the past. It can open the door to new opportunities – systems that circulate materials, create opportunities and turn what was once waste into the start of something else.
Closing the packaging loop
In a small-scale factory in Chișinău, molded paper trays dry using solar-powered collectors. Their journey began as discarded paper collected from households, printing factories, and retailers. Now they are processed by Repack, a venture founded by Valentin Răilean, designed to replace plastic trays with packaging that can be composted.
“In Moldova, enormous amounts of paper are thrown away every year,” Răilean explains. “At the same time, fruits and vegetables are packed in non-compostable plastic trays that are costly and imported. We’re solving two problems at once.”
Răilean’s idea was sparked by years spent watching his family printing house generate waste with no circular solution. A green hackathon gave him the confidence and support to turn the idea into a machine-based process. Today, Repack collects local paper, mixes it with water, forms trays through molds and dries them using a solar-powered system that cuts emissions and proves that low-carbon production is possible even at small scale.
Repack is part of a broader shift in the region. Across Ukraine and Moldova, other ventures in the BOOST cohort are experimenting with bio-based materials and agricultural by-products to replace imported plastics with circular packaging. In Ukraine, Farm Enterprise Vytvirnia is giving fruit waste a new purpose by turning apple pomace into biodegradable cups, while in Moldova, Co-pack is expanding its ability to manufacture sustainable packaging locally. Together, these initiatives and more show how multiple actors, working with different waste streams but toward the same goal, are beginning to shape an emerging circular packaging sector.
Cities as circular laboratories
The solution begins in the kitchen, where residents use bokashi fermentation – a simple method that relies on beneficial microbes to break down food scraps in sealed containers. Inside households, leftovers are layered with bokashi bran, which reduces volume and odor while preparing the material for the next stage.
Biopack Trading, led by Ana Bradu, is tackling a different challenge: the organic waste that accumulates in households every day and the most problematic part of municipal waste.
Once the bokashi process is complete, the fermented scraps are taken to shared collection and pre-composting units located at the foot of apartment buildings. There, the material is further transferred for composting, where it finishes transforming into nutrient-rich compost that can be used to enrich local soil instead of ending up in landfill. A digital layer is designed to tie the system together: sensors installed in the community compost units feed information to a mobile app that helps residents track their contributions, understand the process, and stay engaged through gamification tools.
“Families that compost with bokashi reduce their mixed waste by around forty percent,” Bradu says. “But the most important thing is to change mindsets. People often say, ‘I want to compost, but I can’t.’ We want to show that it is possible – and give them a model they can adopt.”
A single apartment block in Chișinău is expected to divert around ten tonnes of organic waste each year. For Bradu, the pilot is meant not only to solve waste management issues but to demonstrate how communities themselves can lead the transition. As Moldova advances toward EU integration, she is convinced that sustainability will shift from voluntary practice to a structural requirement of both public and private sectors.
A digital market for the things we discard
In Ukraine, another venture is rebuilding the missing links in the recycling system. Recycle, founded by Anton Ustimenko, one of the seven winners of the BOOST: Green Futures Challenge, is a digital marketplace linking households, businesses and certified recyclers. Instead of producing materials, Recycle coordinates how they move, making it easier for recyclers to collect and process waste at scale.
For now, the company focuses on large clients to build a financially stable base. But Ustimenko is clear that households and small businesses will eventually benefit most from a system that rewards good behavior.
“In the future, waste will be your money – your waste, your money,” he says. The logic is simple: if people can earn from sorting and returning waste, participation will increase. Once the logistics and incentives are in place, circular behavior becomes a natural part of everyday life.
Recycle is part of a wider group of Ukrainian ventures exploring how digital tools can support circularity. Felmar’s Lab is piloting reverse vending technologies that automatically collect bottles and cans, feeding data into emerging deposit-return systems. Recup Green is developing AI-enabled collection bins and reusable-cup systems for cafes and events, creating smarter loops for food and beverage packaging.
Together, these initiatives hint at a future in which the digital infrastructure supporting recycling – platforms, sensors, data flows, incentives – becomes just as important as the physical infrastructure.
Turning plastic into design
Elsewhere in Moldova, sheets of speckled, terrazzo-like material lean against the wall. Each one began as bottle caps, shampoo bottles or plastic scraps collected through communities and businesses. This is the work of Recycline, founded by Cristina Tocari, which transforms plastic waste into furniture, panels and objects.
“In the last four years, we’ve transformed over five tonnes of plastic,” Tocari says. “We have over a hundred households collecting for us, and dozens of companies and schools that participate.”
Recycline functions not only as a recycling facility but as a laboratory of ideas. Designers experiment with the textures and colors of recycled material, students prototype new objects, and community events allow residents to touch and recognize the materials they once threw away.
Cross-border connections that accelerate innovation
Behind these experiments is an ecosystem that stretches across borders. Throughout the BOOST: Green Futures Challenge, Polish innovation actors played a central role in helping early-stage founders sharpen their ideas, test their models and access networks that would otherwise remain out of reach.
Through mentorship, expert guidance and exposure to new markets, Polish partners helped startups navigate questions of scalability, regulation and investment readiness. Organizations such as Venture Café Warsaw and the CEE Startup Bridge opened doors to investors, accelerators and industry specialists, offering founders a window into a more mature innovation environment.
For many teams, this was the first opportunity to connect with potential partners outside their home countries. It provided not only practical support – from feedback on business models to introductions with venture capital funds – but also a clearer sense of how their solutions could fit into evolving European markets.
These cross-border interactions help ensure that Moldova’s and Ukraine’s green and circular ventures are not developing in isolation, can access vital knowledge, networks and opportunities, and find pathways to scale.
Circularity as resilience
All of this takes place against the backdrop of conflict, economic disruption, and the road to EU integration. Under such pressures, circular economy initiatives could easily be postponed. Instead, these ventures treat circularity as a strategy for resilience – reducing dependency on imports, creating new jobs, and enabling communities to take ownership of local resources.
Together, they are redefining what happens to waste in Moldova and Ukraine – not only in factories or recycling plants, but in kitchens, neighborhoods, and businesses. They are rebuilding economies where materials circulate, where production becomes low-carbon, and where communities rediscover something that was once common knowledge: nothing truly needs to be thrown away.