Many such companies are seeing a backlog of customer applications to process, though say they hope to catch up with things before this month is over.

The customer service of the garbage haulers is still overloaded, but it is hoped to catch up with inquiries during March.

A report by ETV news show "Aktuaalne kaamera" (AK) on Saturday, which found that many apartment blocks also do not have bio-waste containers for residents to meet the sorting requirements, met with a social media backlash.

Again, the biowaste dumpsters have not been provided due to making contact with the garbage collection firms' customer service department proving impossible.

One such problem area is in Tartu, where private sector firm AS Eesti Keskonnateenused is responsible for garbage collection.

Company boss Ülle Mauer said: "People can't contact customer service [by phone], or if they write, they don't get any answers. Another aspect to these approaches is that a [biowaste] container has been ordered, but hasn't yet been received."

"This problem arose at the end of last year, and it was definitely apparent in January, also in February, but it seems to me that as of now the situation will be resolved," Mauer went on.

"Naturally, there are actually plenty of clients in Tartu who still need to sign a contract; we're certainly talking in the thousands [of people," she added.

Argo Luude, board chair at AS Eesti Keskkonnateenused, meanwhile said the root of the problem lies in the fact that many municipalities nationwide failed to take responsibility for sorting garbage seriously, down the years.

Luude said: "Now we are in a situation where things which could have been done in an orderly way and at a reasonable pace in previous years now have to be done in very, very short order."

"If thousands or maybe even tens of thousands of people want to start calling or writing the garbage firm that a container and a contract need signing, then the poor waste collector is not an übermensch, who can do everything in a flash," Luude went on.

According to Luude, all letters received by the company are registered and none remain unanswered.

"We have for instance issued these bio-waste containers to customers at a pace which was faster in the one month than in the whole previous year combined. Furthermore, the number of calls and inquiries is running at seven, or sometimes eight times higher than we usually get," he added.

"We have also hired more staff, but therein lies another problem, namely that since many customers communicate very rudely, and take out their frustration on the customer service agents, often people are not prepared to do this kind of work, and quit. Today we also see that already the number and number of unanswered letters are decreasing very rapidly. Presumably, we will still be able to resume in March."

Katrin Koppel, adviser to the Ministry of Climate, said that they, too, have heard about problems of this nature, and that it is the responsibility of the municipalities to solve them.

"In the case of a waste collector, it may also be the case that the company has bitten off more than it can chew, and cannot do all that it had pledged. It is vital here that a local authority that has signed a contract with regard to waste disposal and obliges local residents and businesses to sign up for the service, and also obliges them to pay for it, then ensures that a waste disposal firm fulfills this contract," Koppel said.

The City of Tartu has issued a fine warning to AS Eesti Keskonnateenused, but it considers the events of the last three months to be a special case. The expectation in March and April is that the company will start fulfilling its contracts adequately. Then the monitoring of property owners, ie. that they are fulfilling the biowaste sorting requirement, will start later, Ülle Mauer said.

"With regard to our own supervision, we are currently in the phase of sending out letters and giving deadlines. As of now, we do not have any kind of fining procedures. Since the company is log-jammed, we are still waiting for that. After that, it will be possible to carry out a supervision procedure or a misdemeanor procedure. I think that we will reach greater degrees of monitoring after May," she went on.

Estonia itself is still not free of a potential fine arising from non-compliance with EU garbage sorting and recycling requirements, Katrin Koppel, adviser at the Ministry of Climate.

Koppel said: "This fine is up in the air right now in the sense that it will be assessed based on [the situation in] 2025, when recycled [waste] should constitute 55 percent [of total garbage]. Right now, the figure for recycling is somewhere around the 30 percent mark, so it needs almost doubling."

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