WASTE GENERATION AND WASTE MANAGEMENT IN ROMANIA IN THE CONTEXT OF THE EUROPEAN TRANSITION TO A CIRCULAR ECONOMY

Abstract

The circular economy is, from 2015, the European Union’s answer to today’s sustainability issues. This paper highlights some of these issues and summarizes what circular economy means and some of the barriers facing its implementation, based on a classical literature review. Then, the monitoring framework of The European Union is presented, with the most important regulation mentioned. Starting from the famous 3R, the research was narrowed to recycling. An analysis was carried out concerning waste production and waste management based on Eurostat’s official European statistics. A descriptive comparison was made between Romania’s situation and the European Union average to establish the evolution of indicators like waste generation, municipal waste generation, and recycling rates since this country joined The European Union in 2007. Overall, it can be said that Romania has made steady progress in managing waste more responsibly, but there are still quite large differences from the EU average for the majority of the indicators analyzed. Also noteworthy is the fact that the European Union, as a whole, evolves with small, but steady steps, increasing the waste management indicators towards a circular economy.

Keywords

• circular economy
• waste management
• recycling rate
• romania
• european union