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published on 7 April 2021 | reading time approx. 10 minutes
Effective waste management is one of the most typical environmental issues, especially during the quarantine measures taken due to the threat of spread of Covid-19. Based on the World Bank1, the waste generation will increase from 2.01 billion ton in 2016 to 3.40 billion ton in 2050 in the course of urbanization, economic development and population growth in the countries and cities. Currently at least 33 per cent of this waste is recycled in the wrong way around the world.
In 2016-2018, more than 50 enterprises have been compensated for a total amount of about KZT 7 billion; volume of the vehicle components collected and recycled was 100,553 tons.
As pointed out above, field of the waste management is regulated by the tariffs approved by the local representative bodies (Maslikhats).
Tariff plan for waste removal services in the main regional centers and cities of the national status in Kazakhstan approved for 2020 is shown on the Fig. 224.
Reference: Association of the Environmental Practitioners, “Household Waste Management System in Kazakhstan”, 2020;
Charges paid by the population according to the established tariffs are the main compensation for the costs of waste removal companies for removal and disposal of the solid domestic waste. As of today, these tariffs as shown on the Fig. 2 are inadequately low, and generally they do not cover even the costs for the waste removal and disposal. This does not encourage the growth of interest to this field of activities on the part of business operators.
To achieve high performance in the waste recycling in the country, first of all it is necessary to arrange the proper sorting of waste and institutionalize a separate collection of waste. According to Sergei Luschinsky, Director of LS-KOKSHETAU LLP, a company that arranges collection, transportation and recycling of the secondary raw materials24, when a pre-sorted waste is delivered to the waste sorting plant, it can be recycled to 50 per cent; in the absence of pre-sorting, the waste recycling indicator is only 5-7 per cent.
According to Kazinform with reference to the Press Service Office of the Ministry of Energy: “Currently, a separate collection of waste at various stages has been introduced in 51 settlements out of 204 cities and towns throughout the Republic; sorting is arranged in 28 settlements (11 sorting lines, 17 manual sorting at the SDW landfills)”25. Nevertheless, despite the installation of containers for the separate collection of waste, informational work with the population, and generally the environmental consciousness of the population in the country still remains at a low level.
According to the Article 505.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses26, an administrative liability in the form of warning or a fine for the individuals in amount of 20 MCI and from 30 MCI to 100 MCI for legal entities subject to the category of business entity is envisaged for violation of the Rules for improvement of territories of cities and towns, as well as destruction of the infrastructure facilities, destruction and damage of green spaces in the cities and towns. Violation of the Rules for improvement of territories of cities and towns includes the dumping of waste in a wrong place, without limitations. Since nowadays there is no mechanism for fixing these offenses, as a matter of practice the standard is either not efficient enough or just not working at all.
According to E. Nehring, 2020, lack of the environmental education makes a waste sorting ineffective in Kazakhstan: schools do not pay enough attention to the problem of waste sorting.27 A lack of automated sorting is due in no small part to the ineffective sorting of waste: since people are not sure if the waste they throw away will eventually be recycled or sent to an “illegal dumping landfill”, many of them find no sense in separating the waste dumped.
It is obvious that at this stage in terms of the waste recovery, Kazakhstan cannot compete with the developed countries without the foreign investments. However, despite the significant volume of waste and secondary raw materials for recycling, at this stage the foreign investors are not ready to invest in the Kazakhstani waste recycling industry.
According to Mr. Egor Zinger, the co-founder of the “Garbage Business” in Kazakhstan, the problem is that there are no preferences provided, in addition to the low tariffs for the business operators in the “garbage business”; and the governmental support for the environmental business projects is just of the declaratory signification. Thus, in his interview, Mr. Zinger states: “Think for instance of loans. Today the rates of Kazakhstani banks are 12 per cent per annum, while in the Scandinavian countries these rates do not exceed 3 per cent. But if it is about the environment related projects, and then their loans are given at a rate of 0.5 per cent !There are no such figures in our banking system; no financier will give you a loan at such a minimum rate!”28.
As has been demonstrated by the European experience, high performance in the field of waste recycling are generally and mainly achieved by means of private companies. According to the Report of DAMU RG Research Group LLP, a field of waste management in Kazakhstan is mainly directly or indirectly owned by the government, a private initiative is very limited; this hinders the development of natural competition at the market.29 According to researches by the Association of the Environmental Specialists, a share of waste recycling is higher in the large cities of Kazakhstan, since among other factors, there are more private structures30 involved in the collection of waste and their further recycling.
Among others, supply and demand at the secondary waste market is one of the most important factors driving the development of the waste recycling sector. According to the Report of DAMU RG Research Group LLP, nowadays many recycling companies in Kazakhstan encounter a problem of selling raw materials formed after the waste recycling. It is stated in the Report of DAMU RG Research Group LLP that: “...currently various mechanisms of influence – requirements for the mandatory use of recycled materials when releasing new products (in percentage terms) and concessional lending to these enterprises are used in the developed foreign countries”29. Perhaps, the use of these measures could bring the positive results in Kazakhstan.
Currently, the governmental regulation of the waste management issues in Kazakhstan are governed by several ministries such as the Ministry of National Economy, Ministry of Energy, Ministry of Ecology, Geology and Natural Resources, Ministry of Industry and Infrastructural Development, etc. It is stated in the Report of DAMU RG Research Group LLP that: “...each and every activity in the European counties related to the solid domestic waste management is carried out by the Environmental Agencies”29. In many cases, assignment of issues for regulating the waste management system between several ministries that are not particularly related to each other complicates the process of the effective regulation.
Since the country has started actively developing the issue of waste disposal relatively recently, the Kazakhstani environmental legislation, including those for the waste management issues is under continuous finalization and improvement. Among the most significant recent amendments, it is relevant to distinguish the amendments for introducing the “Waste-to-energy” Principle adopted in the Environmental Code and other legal acts on 9 November 2020 and entered into force on 21 November 202031.
An opportunity of the energy (power) disposal of waste is provided by the modifications in the form of their heat treatment in order to reduce the volume of waste and subsequent energy generation. Only those wastes that are not included in the list of waste not subject to energy disposal will be subject to incineration.
The guaranteed purchase of electrical power generated by the combustion plants by the Accounting and Financial Center Supporting the Renewable Energy Sources established at KEGOC JSC is envisaged as a mechanism to support the direction of energy waste management legislation, by analogy with other countries. It is expected that the Accounting and Financial Center will purchase the amount of energy (power) generated at the plant at prices determined in the course of trading. In this case, prices are adjusted according to index on annual basis based on the consumer prices and exchange rate of KZT. The auction ceiling prices for electrical power generated by the energy disposal of waste, the Rules for their determination and the list of waste not subject to energy disposal must be also be approved by the competent authorities in the near future.
In order to reduce the negative environmental impact of activities of the waste incineration plants, a number of requirements have been established for these plants based on the European standards. These provisions have also been incorporated with adoption of the Environmental Code of 2021, particularly in the Article 324 of the Environmental Code of 2021.
As expected, the adopted amendments and modifications will allow reducing the number of solid domestic waste and landfills in the country, and will have a general positive effect on the environment and economy of Kazakhstan.
New statutes of the new Environmental Code of 2021 are more focused on the environmental pollution, emissions, environmental permits and introduction of the latest technologies by the enterprises. The following major changes are provided in the area of waste management without limitation: delimitation of waste management organizations from other entities in order to establish the special requirements for the first ones, introduction of the principle of the waste hierarchy for the purposes of their separation at the source of generation, increase of the storage and accumulation life of certain types of waste, clarification of the concepts of waste “sorting” and “treatment”, as well as the time of transfer of ownership of waste to the waste management organizations.
The envisaged modifications should have a positive effect on the existing environmental problems in Kazakhstan, which consequently will positively affect the population security and health, the environmental enhancement, and cultural development of an attitude of care towards nature, as well as development of the national economy.
Tatyana Khavratova
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