Romania has a significant potential in organic waste, including waste generated in

forestry sector, agro-food industry, municipal biodegradable wastes and effluents from
wastewater treatment facilities. This fact provides a good opportunity to develop
anaerobic digestion technologies in Romania, since the funding for R&D of renewable
resources and waste management has increased for the last year
Biggest problem still landfilling and illegal dumps
Romania's biggest waste problem is the landfilling on dumps that don't comply with EU
regulations. In urban areas major steps for the separate collection of wastes has been
done in the last year, but in the rural areas no progress has been made. So far there
have been made environmental balances and risk assessments for more than 90% of
the 450 landfills and over 200 of them have already been closed.

Romania suffers a lack of investors in the waste management sector mainly due to the
lack of infrastructure and difficulties in the application of the legislation. Nevertheless it
has developed a National Waste Management Strategy 2003-2013 and the National
Waste Management Plan together with the County Waste Management Plans that are
reviewed every five years. Also the National Laboratory for Waste Management was
founded. In addition, to strengthen recycling manufacturers are required to recycle 20 %
and to reappraise 30 % of the quantity of the packaging resulting from their work. The
percentage will increase to 50%, 66% respectively and if the companies will not meet
the targets they will have to pay compensation.

Cohesion Fund offers further possibilities for waste management development

End of last year the European Commission approved a new integrated waste
management project for Romania financed by European funds, with the investment
value reaching EUR 26 million. The estimated investments will target the shutdown of
two non-compliant urban waste dumps, the opening of a county waste dump in line with
European standards, waste collection facilities, the construction of a composting facility
and a sorting unit. This project will benefit most population of the county, namely some
297,859 inhabitants. The project will create approx. 170 jobs, with their number to reach
nearly 150 after the investment is completed.
This EC grant for waste management in Romania will not be the last - Choesion Funds
available from 2007 for Romania in the field of waste and water management are
expected to increase to 400-500 million eur annually and the foreign companies are
showing an increasing interest for the recovery of waste in Romania.

Copyright: © WtERT (26.04.2010)

Municipal Waste Collection
In 2006, the total quantities of municipal waste collected, directly, through the
specialized departments within the Local Boards, or indirectly by granting this duty to
special sanitation services on a contract basis, was 6,809,000 tons.
Selective collection represented only 2% from the total generated quantity.
Urban population percentage which benefits from sanitation was 79.53% and the
percentage in the rural area was 11.44%. Table 5 presents the percentages for each
development regions and at national level.