High Investments in the Environmental Sector
If Turkey wants to reach the European Union‘s status, the country has to invest more than 27 billion US-Dollar in the areas of water, waste water and waste until 2023, according to expert opinion.
According to Germany Trade & Invest (GTAI), the economic development agency of the Federal Republic of Germany, the major part of this amount should be spend for the water economy. The water supply is managed by public companies, which are located in the provinces. Furthermore, more than 1,400 new sewage plants are supposed to be built in the next few years, according to the Turkish Government‘s “Waste Water Treatment Plan“. According to the GTAI-information, Turkish companies such as Enta Mühendislik, Seren Mühendislik and Gensu provide biological and chemical solutions for the effluent disposal. Thereby they are looking for the collaboration with foreign partners. Additionally, there are further plans to complete sewage pipelines with a length of 30,000 kilometers.
Waste management and recycling
The rapdily changing habits of consumer‘s consumption and lifestyle are accompanied by a growing amount of packaging waste. Meanwhile its quantity amounts to 20 percent of the weight and 50 percent of the volume of the solid household waste. Due to an increased environmental awareness of the Turkish population and new legal requirements, which were issued in the course of the planned EU-Integration, proposals regarding waste disposal and recycling will be promoted. Therefore, the ministry for environmental and urban development issued a comprising enactment regarding the disposal management of waste and waste water (government gazette „Resmi Gazete“ No. 29314 April, 2nd 2015).
According to the department of statistics (Türkiye İstatistik Kurumu – TÜIK), 28 million tons of waste were collected and disposed of in 1,391 Turkish cities and municipalities (a population of 71 million) in 2014. The lion‘s share (18 million tons) went to organized and professional landfills. However, almost 10 million tons of the garbage went to city-owned landfills. 126,485 tons of organic material was transformed into compost in appropriate facilities. 15.7 million tons of waste was produced in the processing industry – among them also 1.0 million tons of hazardous substances. According to the Turkish statistic, 5 percent of the total waste is recycled. Some 45 percent of the waste was sold or transferred to licensed waste disposal and waste processing companies. About 31 percent went to organized landfills. Furthermore, the remaining waste was disposed of in incineration sites.
The environmental expenditure reached about 7.13 billion US-Dollar in 2014 and corresponded to about 1.2 percent of the gross domestic product. About three quarters of the expenditure went to the state.
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GR42016
