Waste management in Russia

Waste management in Russia refers to the legislation, actions and processes pertaining to the management of the various waste types encountered throughout the Russian Federation. The basis of legal governance for waste management in Russia at the federal level is outlined through Federal Law No. 89-FZ, which defines waste as “the remains of raw materials, materials, semi-finished products, other articles or products that have been formed in the process of production or consumption as well as the goods (products) that have lost their consumer properties”. Throughout its existence, the government of the Soviet Union introduced state-wide legislative frameworks and recycling programs for effective waste management in the pursuit of a circular economy to reduce new material production. However, the dissolution of the Soviet Union consequently erased these initiatives, yielding the onset of a Post-Soviet Russia largely dependent upon landfills for waste management. In 2019, almost 70 million tonnes of municipal solid waste was produced in Russia, with over 90% of this amount being deposited in landfills. The Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resource Usage stated in the same year that landfills in Russia occupied an area roughly equivalent to the size of the Netherlands. In line with growing political and social pressures attributed primarily to the inadequate management of municipal solid waste across the country in the past two decades, the Government of Russia introduced widespread rubbish reforms in 2018 under the National Project on Ecology, which contains the country's roadmap for achieving a municipal solid waste recycling rate of 36% by 2024.

History

Soviet Union (1922 – 1991)

Enacting large-scale industrial production was a central focus of the government of the Soviet Union. To maximally preserve the supply of raw materials, the reuse of new products was heavily emphasized through the establishment of state-run organizations that provided collection services. Widescale recycling programs were introduced by the Soviet government in the 1970s, whereby recyclable materials were sorted into five distinct categories: “waste paper, polymeric materials, tires, textiles, and broken glass”. Consequently, it is estimated that almost 30% of total paper and 45% of all glass bottles produced were recycled throughout the 1980s. Consumer goods did not feature materials as plastic, aluminum and tin throughout the vast majority of the Soviet Union's existence, although these were common in other global markets. In 1986, the government of the Soviet Union introduced the concept of extended producer responsibility within the state to hold organizations accountable for their waste production through a legislative framework. The legislative framework mandated that organizations must provide adequate processing facilities and recycling operations to accommodate the output of any new materials or products. Due to the widespread philosophy of waste material repurposing and stringent legislative frameworks witnessed across the state, municipal waste management was generally not observed as a significant issue throughout the existence of the Soviet Union. The dissolution of the Soviet Union saw the collapse of the various waste management systems that contributed to the state's efforts in developing a circular economy.

Russian Federation (1991 – Present)

The newly formed Russian Federation sought to instigate mass reform in the waste management sector to revive the success witnessed under the Soviet government. In 1996, a federal waste reform program called “Waste” was launched by the Russian government, which sought to “create a regulatory and technological framework to conduct a unified government policy regarding waste management at every administrative level”. Additional goals of the program included a structured national recycling initiative and the pilot testing of emerging technologies for improved recycling and decontamination efficiency for both municipal and industrial waste. 80% of the required funding was projected to come from budgetary funds, whilst secondary raw material sales would yield the remaining 20%. The objectives of the program were not realized primarily due to an ensuing lack of financial and political support. Subsequently, a new law administered by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology was introduced in June 1998, known as Federal Law No. 89-FZ “On the Production and Consumption Waste”. The law defined waste as “the remains of raw materials, materials, semi-finished products, other articles or products that have been formed in the process of production or consumption as well as the goods (products) that have lost their consumer properties”. Additionally, the law provides general guidelines for the governance of waste management across various levels of government as follows:

Federal: design and enactment of unified waste management policies across the nation. The Ministry for Natural Resources and Ecology is directly responsible for the implementation of these policies. Regional: environmental reporting to assist the federal government in the effective implementation of waste management policies, in addition to designing and enacting separate regional waste management policies in consonance with federal policy. Local: design and enactment of waste collection and removal services at the community level. Federal Law No. 89-FZ currently receives periodic amendments in line with the evolving waste management requirements of the country, which are vetted and evaluated by the Federation Council.

Waste classification Waste is classified in accordance with Order No. 786 of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology, which details the 2002 Federal Classification Catalogue of Waste that provides a regulatory framework pertaining to the systematic categorization of waste in Russia. Waste products are evaluated by the "origin, physical and aggregative state, hazardous properties and environmental risk" inherent to the waste type. Operators and personnel seeking to handle hazard classes between 1 and 4 require waste management licenses administered by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology.

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