Kazakh authorities have pledged financial support to combat the perennial problem of municipal solid waste (MSW).
According to a report by Analysts at Energyprom.kz, in 2023, Kazakhstan’s rate of recycling garbage fell to 23.9% from 25.4% in 2022.
To tackle this issue, the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources has allocated $445 million for the construction of new plants for recycling and processing MSW between 2024-2026. Adhering to European-standard best practices, the initial batch of will comprise 11 projects costing $133 million. Project managers involved in the initiative will receive loans from the ministry at a subsidized annual interest rate of 3%.
The ministry stated that the slight decline in the recycling rate is due to a calculation error. It transpires that up until 2023, data was incorrectly classified by Astana and instead of recycled waste, it related to sorted municipal waste. In turn, the capital’s recorded volume of MSW recycling at 17.1%, inaccurately inflated the statistics for Kazakhstan as a whole. The Bureau of National Statistics of the Republic of Kazakhstan failed to correct the data for 2021-2022, when the figures might even be lower.
A recalculation by the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources, clarified that since the share of processing recycled materials actually decreased, it will not be possible to reach the intended target of 27% by the end of the given period. At the same time, the volume of waste collected in Kazakhstan last year decreased by 4.7% to 4.1 million tons.
According to the government’s operations document for Kazakhstan’s transition to a green economy, by 2030 the MSW recycling rate should be 40%. However, today only four out of five Kazakhstan households have designated bins for the division of waste, and 19% have no access at all to waste collection services. Furthermore, residents in rural areas who use coal for heat have nowhere to dispose ash.
Referencing the slow development of an infrastructure for recycling, the Minister of Ecology Yerlan Nysanbayev stated that Kazakhstan currently lacks 82,000 garbage containers, and major cities are inadequately equipped to deal with waste removal. Landfills are also a problem. Overburdened, illegally built and employing outdated methods of waste compaction, only 20.6% of Kazakhstan’s 3,000 landfills comply with all modern safety and sanitary regulations.
A weak environmentally-conscious culture has led to a plethora of unauthorized dumps for MSW. Last year alone, 5,500 illegal sites were identified by local authorities, of which 86 percent were eliminated.
To prevent further spread, the minister has proposed an increase in fines for illegal dumping. Having remained low for years, many Kazakhs have found it cheaper to pay the penalties than transfer their garbage to official landfills.
According to KazWaste, problems concerning tariffs, low rates of waste collection, and waste removal costs persist throughout Kazakhstan. At the end of February 2024, household appliances could be recycled in only 13 of 20 Kazakh’s regions, wood in just three, and used filters in Aktobe alone.
The volume of general waste material able to be recycled also remains low since much of the sorting is manual. As a result, the potential market is small and of limited interest to entrepreneurs.
