Increase the share of recycled plastic to 40 percent by 2030. The Kazakhstan Waste Management Association sets such an ambitious task. Today in the country, this volume barely reaches 22 percent. Specialists of the sphere gathered at a conference in the capital to discuss how to achieve such results and answer the questions: what hinders the development of the circular economy in Kazakhstan? What are the new development opportunities in the plastic waste sector and what will the reform of the EPR system entail? Today there are only a few dozen enterprises in the country that are engaged in the collection and processing of polymers. This is not only a problem of Kazakhstan, but also of the whole world. Every year, up to 2 billion tons of household waste is generated on the planet. The way out is a circular economy, experts say.
“The world community and, in fact, our environmental organizations raise this issue, sound the alarm and believe that plastic needs to be recycled. Plastic consists of polyethylene, polypropylene, low-pressure polyethylene, high-pressure polyethylene and others – a whole family of polymers there, which are collectively called plastic. There is a certain amount of recycling for each type, but the most important difficulty is to collect it. We have introduced a container fee since December. Therefore, our entire population, housewives, please, it is need to be divided,” said Shynbolat Baikulov, Chairman of the Kazakhstan Waste Management Association “Kazwaste”.
Translation by Ademi Serikbay
Editing by Saule Mukhamejanova