CIRCULAR ECONOMY AND WASTE MANAGEMENT

A circular economy closes the loop between extraction, manufacturing, and disposal by advocating for designing products to reduce waste, using products and materials for as long as possible, and recycling materials from end‐of‐life products back into the economy.

Municipal solid waste poses a growing threat that surpasses local and regional boundaries. With a rapidly increasing amount of wastes, it has become a challenge for Georgia, with mounting public health, environmental, social, and economic costs.

Municipal solid waste should be managed through a waste hierarchy approach that puts efforts to reduce consumption and increase reuse ahead of efforts focused on waste collection, recovery, and disposal. The waste management hierarchy complements circular economy thinking, which promotes efforts to recycle end-of-life products back into the economy, in addition to promoting waste reduction and reuse.

As much as the current efforts in the implementation of the waste management strategies should continue in Georgia, it does not mean that there should be a delay in adoption of the circular economy measures as they will quickly result in reducing the stream of wastes.

The Government of Georgia (GoG) has acknowledged the need to move towards a circular economy, minimizing waste generation, separating at source, directing waste streams to various ways of utilization and treating waste as a resource. Therefore, the country is looking to speed up the preparation of the Roadmap to Circular Economy and adopting the National Strategy for Circular Economy with the associated Implementation Plan.

More to read on Circular Economy and Waste Management in the upcoming publication of Circularity Mapping for Georgia 2022 supported by the Government of Sweden.