Solid waste management practices and review of recovery and recycling operations in Turkey

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Abstract

This paper provides a general overview of solid waste data and management practices employed in Turkey during the last decade. Municipal solid waste statistics and management practices including waste recovery and recycling initiatives have been evaluated. Detailed data on solid waste management practices including collection, recovery and disposal, together with the results of cost analyses, have been presented. Based on these evaluations basic cost estimations on collection and sorting of recyclable solid waste in Turkey have been provided. The results indicate that the household solid waste generation in Turkey, per capita, is around 0.6 kg/year, whereas municipal solid waste generation is close to 1 kg/year. The major constituents of municipal solid waste are organic in nature and approximately 1/4 of municipal solid waste is recyclable. Separate collection programmes for recyclable household waste by more than 60 municipalities, continuing in excess of 3 years, demonstrate solid evidence for public acceptance and continuing support from the citizens. Opinion polls indicate that more than 80% of the population in the project regions is ready and willing to participate in separate collection programmes. The analysis of output data of the Material Recovery Facilities shows that, although paper, including cardboard, is the main constituent, the composition of recyclable waste varies strongly by the source or the type of collection point.

Introduction

Implementation of appropriate solid waste management practices requires reliable waste statistics. The data should represent a sufficiently long time frame (usually more than a few years), with relatively short measurement frequencies, to be statistically acceptable. This manuscript is a product of an effort aimed to review the existing data on solid waste management (SWM) in Turkey. Since, solid waste management constitutes one of the major Municipal expenditures; an additional attempt was made to review the cost data of solid waste management practices. The characteristics and costs for managing solid waste alters from one Municipal application to another and in addition to demographic facts, it is also a factor of how cost and solid waste terms are defined. Therefore, the authors have made an attempt to consolidate some of the solid waste data representing demographic and social facts of Turkey. This study can be assumed as a summary of long-standing efforts in establishing reliable figures on solid waste characteristics of Turkey.

Section snippets

Solid waste statistics

The State Institute of Statistics (SIS) has published one of the major sources of information in solid waste in Turkey. This extensive research published in 1993, provides valuable data on compositional variations in the household solid waste in Turkey (SIS, 1993). The household solid waste data collected from 57% of municipalities, corresponds to a sufficiently long sampling time frame and statistically acceptable waste collection frequencies. Therefore, almost all scientific publications

Conclusions

The review of municipal and household solid waste statistics in Turkey indicates that average household waste generation per capita is 0.6 kg/day and average municipal solid waste is 0.95 kg/day. The composition of municipal solid waste varies by the source of waste; however in all cases organic constituents accounts for more than 50% of municipal solid waste.

Material recovery data have been obtained from 31 municipal separate collection programmes, with data period extending up to 5 years of

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