WASTE REDUCTION AND RECYCLING -A CASE STUDY FOR ROMANIA.

The paper is a review of the current situation of waste management in Romania, focusing on solids recovery and recycling. Although some efforts have been made in the Romanian waste sector in order to reach the European targets within the deadlines, the national waste management plan update and waste prevention program implementation are delayed. At the moment, public awareness campaigns are being developed and implemented for recycling, without much emphasis on reduction. However, for now most of the waste ends up in landfills. The current recycling percentages are below 15% of the total municipal solid waste generated, with the lowest landfilling percentage of 69% (based on Eurostat data for 2011-2015). For 2015, Romania had the highest landfilling rate, of 72%, compared to the European Union value of 25.6%. Several separate collection strategies were studied in order to underline the main drawbacks in each case and to identify the optimal options for the given social and economic environment. Solutions for separate collection and waste recycling are being currently implemented in several Romanian regions as case studies under the initiative of local authorities and/or NGO's, without a unitary national approach. The solutions with innovative character and the best practices related to high recovery rates are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]