Passive Aggression: The Other Toxic Waste in Croatia and the Hidden Accumulation of Civic Frustration
From illegal dumps and abandoned concrete to passive aggression, pessimism and the pollution we cannot measure in tonnes
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Perhaps the most important kind of toxic waste in Croatia is not the waste we can see.
Passive aggression is what frustration sounds like when nobody knows where to put it.
We can measure tonnes of industrial waste, contaminated soil, abandoned concrete and illegal dumps. We can map the locations, calculate remediation costs and argue about who should be responsible. But there is another kind of accumulation that is much harder to measure: frustration.
You can hear it in conversations in villages and small towns. It appears as pessimism, resignation, passive aggression and the feeling that everyday problems simply have to be tolerated. Someone walks a dog without a leash. Someone leaves dog waste behind. Someone drives while holding a mobile phone in one hand and the steering wheel in the other. None of these things, by themselves, explains a society. But together they can become symptoms of something deeper: a weakening sense that public space and other people deserve consideration.
This is where the metaphor of toxic waste becomes interesting.
When frustration accumulates, passive aggression can become another form of social pollution.
Physical waste accumulates when nobody takes responsibility for removing it. Social frustration can accumulate in much the same way. A problem appears, nothing changes, another problem arrives, and eventually people stop expecting solutions. What was once unacceptable becomes normal.
People know the landscape, they know the abandoned factory, the illegal dump, the unfinished building or the contaminated site. They also know the stories behind them. When something remains unresolved for years, it becomes part of the landscape — and eventually part of the collective mood.
And pessimism has plenty of fuel: there is inflation and the pressure of rising living costs. There is rapid automation driven by AI and the uncertainty surrounding increasingly capable systems. There are climate and environmental changes that can make the future feel less predictable. Even when these problems are global, people experience them locally — through their household budgets, their jobs, their farms, their health anxieties, their communities and their surroundings.
The numbers, separated
| Location | Quantity currently documented | What the material is | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Savica, Zagreb — Gudronske jame | ~33,000 t claimed | Gudron / petroleum-industry waste and other industrial contamination | Historical contamination; quantity is being publicly cited, but I have not found an official 2026 state estimate confirming exactly 33,000 t |
| Gospić — former PPK Velebit | ~44,000 t total | Hazardous + non-hazardous illegally deposited waste | Government remediation plan, September 2026 |
| Gospić — buried material | ~33,000 t | Hazardous + non-hazardous waste mixed with soil/stone | Buried at average ~2.9 m depth |
| Gospić — loose hazardous waste by silo | ~4,500 t | Hazardous mixed/mechanical-processing waste | Removal planned; selected contractors |
| Gospić — bagged waste | ~650 t | Non-hazardous waste | Being removed for treatment |
| Gospić — buildings/silo | ~6,000 t | Hazardous + non-hazardous waste | Fourth remediation phase |
| Poznanovec, Bedekovčina | ~13,200 t | Plastic, packaging, tyres, mechanical-processing waste; some may contain hazardous substances | Two locations; remediation contractor selected September 2026 |
| Samobor, Vrbovec Samoborski | 8,060 t | ~¾ plastic; packaging, rubber, paper, cardboard, metals and mixed municipal waste | State remediation project |
| Pazin, former Istraplastika | ~13,000 t | Mainly baled plastic, textiles and rubber | State remediation project |
| Varaždin / former Mundus | ~5,000 t | Current reporting says ~5,000 t improperly deposited | Removal and remediation are underway. By 14 September 2026, nearly 40% of the waste had reportedly been removed. Follow-up checks will determine whether the soil or water needs further remediation. |
| Senj | ~2,600 t | Frequently cited figure | At least 2,600 t is cited in connection with a USKOK investigation into hazardous waste deposited at the landfill above Sveti Juraj. The source I found reports the investigation, not a remediation plan or cleanup status. |
| Štikada | ~5,000 t | Same Lovinac priority location — do NOT add again | Cleanup status not confirmed. Reporting describes about 3,500 t at the site and says there is no remediation plan or timeline; an earlier report says Lovinac applied for funding to remediate the site. |
| Lički Osik | ~1,000,000 t claimed | Political/public claim about the wider area, not an independently established site inventory | No verified site-specific remediation status found. The “~1,000,000 t” figure is a political claim about the wider area, not a confirmed inventory for Lički Osik. |
| Udbina | No reliable tonnage found | Cannot responsibly assign a number | No verified status found for the alleged problematic waste site. The available official search results concerned the municipality’s regular Čojluk municipal landfill, so they don’t establish the status of the site in your row. |
| Otočac / Podum | 6,112 t in 2024 | Specifically waste classified KBO 19 12 12; not necessarily the entire problematic site | No verified status found for the alleged problematic waste site. The available official search results concerned the municipality’s regular Čojluk municipal landfill, so they don’t establish the status of the site in your row. |
Older official “nasty spots”
This is where the numbers become enormous — particularly Kutina.
Kutina — phosphogypsum
A 2025 environmental-impact document gives:
~8.5 million tonnes
of deposited non-hazardous solid phosphogypsum, plus more than 2 million m³ of process acidic water.
This is absolutely enormous, but it should not be described as 8.5 million tonnes of hazardous waste.
Biljane Donje — Black Hill
~140,000 tonnes
of ferrosilicon/ferroalloy slag was illegally deposited there. The government/HRT gives the same approximately 140,000-tonne figure.
This is an important one because Biljane Donje has already been subject to remediation, so if you're calculating currently remaining waste, don't simply add the historical 140,000 t to the present-day inventory.
Sovjak near Rijeka
~40,000 tonnes
of liquid waste and soft tar are expected to be extracted during remediation.
This is one of the clearest old hazardous-waste tonnages.
Kosica
The official national waste-management plan gives the contaminated area as: 63,000 m² —not a tonnage.
Therefore I would not invent a tonnage conversion.
Žitnjak / E-Kolektor
were reportedly left by E-Kolektor after the company went into bankruptcy.
Ježdovec
There is no defensible exact total that I found.
Recent reporting describes “tens of thousands of tonnes” buried in the Ježdovec forest.
So I would record it as:
≥10,000 t? — NO.
Even “10,000” would be an invented floor because “tens of thousands” does not establish that exact threshold for a particular measured inventory.
Passive aggression is the noise made by problems that were never resolved.
Kaštelanski zaljev slag dump
Again, the official plan gives:
~200,000 m²
over which ash and slag are distributed, not a tonnage.
So this also cannot legitimately enter a tonnage grand total.
Botovo
The official documentation identifies oily sludge, but says further investigation is needed to establish the exact quantity and extent of contamination.
Therefore:
No defensible tonnage.
Knin
The official plan identifies mazut contamination and three contaminated lagoons. A later description gives approximately:
- 40 m³ of spilled mazut
- 48,000 m² affected by the tank spill
- 23,200 m² of lagoons
- another 8,000 m² affected by secondary oil contamination.
Again, this is not a tonnage inventory.
Obrovac
The former alumina plant's red-mud and caustic/lye lagoons are unquestionably one of Croatia's historic environmental black spots, but I could not find a sufficiently authoritative current tonnage figure that I would be comfortable inserting into a national total.
The original national strategy identifies the Tvornica glinice Obrovac lagoons as a black spot.
So what is the grand total?
Here's the important part.
If we take only the currently quantified figures that can reasonably be put into tonnes, we get a substantial number.
“Croatia’s waste problem goes beyond illegal dumps: about 10 million tonnes of documented and estimated waste are associated with various sites — but this is not necessarily a total of toxic or hazardous waste. Meanwhile, tens of millions of tonnes of concrete may be embodied...”
Read the post on X →How much frustration can a community accumulate before it becomes another form of pollution? Like noise pollution from motorcycles?
The answer cannot be measured in tonnes, because this is a different unit entirely. A community can absorb frustration before it begins to pollute the social environment itself. That quantity may have no official unit, but people can feel it.
We can remove contaminated material from the ground. We can demolish abandoned buildings and recycle their concrete. We can clean illegal dumps. But if the underlying feeling of resignation remains, another kind of waste continues to accumulate — in conversations, relationships, public spaces and expectations about the future.
That is the real crux of the story.
Croatia's environmental waste is visible. Its accumulated civic frustration is not. And perhaps dealing with one requires us to start talking seriously about the other.
References
Croatian Environmental Protection and Energy Efficiency Fund — remediation of illegal waste sites
Croatian Ministry of Environmental Protection and Green Transition — environmental and waste-management documentation
Croatian State Inspectorate — waste-disposal and inspection information
Zagreb City — Savica contamination and waste-removal documentation
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