Waste Management in EU, Asia and Turkey

Abstract

Practices of municipal solid waste (MSW) management in various countries depend on existing rules and regulations as well as their dedication to attaining sustainable waste management. Most of the developing countries suffer from lack of optimal MSW management which cause environmental problems and economic losses whereas in many developed countries better management of MSW brings environmental and economic benefits. This paper starts with a brief literature review of waste management practices and the share of the disposal methods for the countries in the world. It is noted that in the E.U., recycling and composting are applied to 46% of the waste whereas waste-to-energy (WTE) is used for 27.3% and landfilling is employed for only 26.3% of the wastes. A good example of waste management is the city of Milano in Italy and the statisitcs are presented in this paper along with the reasons behind the highly advanced waste management in this city. Milano (population: 1.5 million), has achieved 23% recycling and 17% composting rates while the rest of the MSW is utilized as fuel for electricity recovery in a WTE power plant. Moreover, recent developments for China in waste management are presented and the background of this development is explained. China is the first developing country to realize that WTE as an environmentally superior alternative to landfilling. In 2018, there were 450 WTE plants which recovered energy from 395,000 tons of waste per day. Finally, this paper shows the status of Turkey's waste management practice and share of disposal methods among all applications. It can be said that Turkey needs improvement on recycling and composting rate, which was only 12% in 2018, while an initiation to the WTE technology is necessary. Uncontrolled landfilling still constitutes 20% of all disposal methods whereas WTE is almost none for the country.