Waste Management in Romania : How Romania Can Turn its Recycling Rate Around

With an area of 238,391 square kilometers Romania is the 13th largest country in Europe, and with 19.94 million inhabitants, is the seventh most populous Member State of the European Union.

Its capital and largest city, Bucharest, is the sixth largest city in the EU. While the country the country has long relied on landfill, there are signs that the slow move away from that is starting to accelerate.

Responsibility for municipal waste management is that of the local public administration, which, directly or having licensed the sanitation service towards an authorised economic operator, has to provide collection (including separate collection), transportation, treatment, recycling and final disposal of the waste.

Over 75% of the existing municipal waste management systems are operated by private companies, of which 90% are Romanian.

The amount of municipal waste generated per person in Romania in 2014 was 254 kg per person, similar to 2012 and 2013 but lower that in 2010 (330 kg per person) and 2008 (440 kg per person).

Together with Poland and Latvia, Romania had the lowest per capita waste generation in 2014 (under 300 kg per person).

Of the 254 kg of municipal waste generated per person, 214 kg per person were treated with 5% recycled, 12% composted, 2% used in cement factories and 82% landfilled.

The systems performance will largely depend on the speed of the implementation of PAYT and door-to-door collections.

From 2007, Romania has been in the process of implementing regional Integrated Waste Management Systems (IWMS) with national and EU funds.

The process is delayed, the performance of the solid waste management sector continues to be weak and the key challenges include: i) institutional arrangements suffer gaps and inconsistencies; ii) crucial supervision and enforcement capacities remain weak (monitoring and data collection are limited); iii) focus on investment has obscured cost recovery needs (most local tariffs are insufficient, even to cover recurring costs).

However, recently some actions have been taken in order to optimise the sector, improve institutional arrangements, operationalising national waste management plans and progressing towards medium-term economic and financial sustainability. The results are very positive.

Romania has learned from the successes and mistakes of the 2007- 2013 period and the main messages are:

For some Eastern European countries such as Romania (with a large area and large population), a period of seven years is not enough to implement IWMS and to reach EU targets at national level

local conditions are very important and determine the period for the implementation process of IWMS. For example, geomorphology, climate, infrastructure, urban development, education, religion, public mobility, public awareness and the public’s ability to pay for the services.

Some economic instruments have been analysed and proposed for Romania, starting with 2017. Examples include: An EPR scheme on packaging waste where packaging producers pay, landfill tax and penalty, a waste fee scheme and Pay As You Throw (PAYT), eco-tax for shopping bags, deposit refund scheme for certain packaging waste and restrictions/bans on the disposal of certain types of waste in landfills.

It is considered that due to the implementation of economic instruments, the MSW recycling rate (including composting) will gradually increase from 6.0% in 2016 to 16.8% in 2018, 24.4% in 2020 and 30.5% in 2025.

Even under the most optimistic assumptions, Romania will not be able to reach the 2020 MSW recycling target but is "crystal clear" that the proposed economic instruments will have a positive impact on recycling rates for MSW.

The systems performance will largely depend on the speed of the implementation of PAYT and door-to-door collections.

This article was published on March 24, 2017