Waste management

By joining the EU, Croatia took over certain restrictions on waste disposal. The Law on Sustainable Waste Management defines waste as waste generated in households and waste that is in its nature and composition similar to household waste, in addition to industrial, agricultural and forestry waste.

To contribute to improving the state of the environment and to meet its targets, it is important to separate collection of waste in order to reduce the amount of waste intended for disposal and use valuable properties of separately collected waste at the same time.

Waste is more than garbage; there are all sort of substances left behind after use that can be a valuable resorce.

The waste needs to be properly handled or separated according to its type to ease processing or to prepare it for recovery procedures.

Did you know? Cities and municipalities we live in are obliged to provide all the requirements for separate waste collection.

Waste generated in our homes comes in many different forms. We need to learn to recognize and properly separate them and thus enable their recycling. More than half of the household basket waste consists of paper and plastic that can be recycled.

It is time to manage waste instead of dispose it of to landfills. If the waste is separated, useful raw materials such as paper, metal, plastic or glass can be reused.

Because we are using existing raw materials we are using less energy to produce new things, we are saving money, protecting the environment and creating new job positions in the field of collecting and processing raw materials.

In order to establish a truly integrated waste management system, we all must engage – at our homes, kindergartens, school and offices. All cities, municipalities and institutions need to participate.

With the ultimate goal of creating a self-sustainable waste management system, Croatian regional authorities together with the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Physical Planning and Construction proposed a multi-year plan of action with the underlying objective to establish an integrated waste management system organized in accordance with current European requirements and standards by the end of 2018. The Strategy regulates the management of different types of waste in Croatia including building new waste management centres and rehabilitating or closing existing landfills.

To achieve all this, we all need to become aware of when, how and how much waste we produce, seek the way to reduce its creation, and if already created, find the way to separatewhat is useful and dispose it in proper containers.

The number and type of containers for separating waste collection sets our city or municipality, or our public utility in order to be fully adapted to our living space.

The crucial thing isto stop disposing waste and begin managing it. We currently throw in landfills over 80% of mixed municipal waste.

Managing waste implies – in the manner of a good master, using valuable raw materials to save energy needed to produce new things and rationally using resources that are at our disposal.