In early 2024, the Kazakhstan Association of Waste Management KazWaste demanded to raise municipal solid waste (MSW) collection fees 2 to 10 times. Ecologists are positive that it will promote effective and safe treatment of waste. It is really so?
Waste problems
Kazakhstan does not recycle even one-fourth of all MSW produced. According to the monitoring agency Energyprom.kz, Kazakhstan collected 4.3 million tonnes of MSW in 2018, and recycled on 11.5 per cent. By 2023, the situation improved, 23.9 per cent of 4.1 million tonnes was recycled.
All MSW management stages have problems. Thus, only four in five Kazakhstanis have an opportunity to drop off waste at special containers, which are collected by public utilities.
Companies that collect and transport waste undergo the pressure from authorities. The latter claim that waste management organisations are ‘monopolistic’ and cancel contracts with them. Thus, companies find it difficult to raise their charges.
“There are specific difficulties at the stage of recycling. Due to a low level of separate collection of MSW (dry and wet fractions), their sorting is done manually. The remaining portion of recyclable waste is small,” according to Energyprom.kz.
According to members of KazWaste Association, the waste removal fee should be raised up to 1,000-1,500 Kazakh tenge (2.1-3.1 dollars) per person given all existing problems. The association specified that the fee has not changed for about 10 years in some regions of Kazakhstan, and was 89-280 tenge (0.19-0.59 dollars) per person. In Almaty, the biggest city of the country, the fee remained the same since 2017 and was raised in May 2024. It was a 30 per cent rise – from 553 to 718.5 Kazakh tenge (from 1.16 dollars to 1.51 dollars) per person.
What will be affected by the rise?
CABAR.asia asked Maria Zhevlakova, expert in sustainable development, circular economy and effective training, to give her comment about the rise in tariffs.
“If we consider some system ‘Clean Kazakhstan’, which will have the reduced amount of waste, reduced pollution, improved quality of the environment, the question that arises is how it will be achieved. We need either to reduce the amount of waste discarded by the people or to increase the amount of resources for waste recycling, removal and treatment. We need more money for that,” Maria Zhevlakova said.
According to Mikhail Belyakov, eco-blogger, host of the podcast ‘Ekologia bez paniki’ [translated from Russian as ‘Panic-free ecology’], a rise in the waste removal fee will not improve MSW recycling.
“We do need to raise the fees because everything else gets expensive. But some ordinary rise in fees will not encourage people to produce less waste or sort it. Because it does not matter if you sort it or not, you pay the same,” Belyakov said.
He suggested comparing two ordinary families consisting of four members. Family number one does not sort the waste and produces one bucket of mixed waste a day. Family number two sorts the waste and discards only one bucket a week. But both families pay the same fee for waste removal – 2,874 Kazakh tenge (6 dollars) a month.
“As to the business, it is not all that simple there. If they do not have their own site, they pay a standard fee depending on the square area of their business, number of seats, or number of employees. If they become champions of sorting or minimalism, they will pay equally,” Mikhail Belyakov pointed out the imperfection of the tariff policy.
Aizhan Ryskulova, deputy executive director of KazWaste, agrees that the name of the fee – waste removal, transportation and burial – implies the practice that has nothing to do with the sorting.
“The fee is chargeable from the people for collection and removal of waste. Then, the waste goes to sorting, and after the sorting, the recyclable material goes to recycling. If the basic part of the tariff is spent on separate collection of municipal waste, it will surely increase the level of recycling. Because recycling depends on the proper removal,” Ryskulova said.
Mikhail Belyakov suggested introducing differential tariffs. “If someone sorts or produces less waste, he/she will pay less, respectively. It will help us,” the ecologist said.
Belyakov cited the calculation: waste sorting in public schools can reduce MSW removal costs by 40 per cent or even more. Also, schools can collect recyclable materials: waste paper, plastic, aluminium, and then a company pays for such materials, i.e. schools can have additional income.
“Waste collectors will have additional incentive to collect waste: plants will get raw materials and will not stand idle. We have not only schools, but also kindergartens, colleges, universities. It would be better to do it instead of raising the tariff,” Mikhail Belyakov said.
Concerns about the tariff
Aizhan Ryskulova shares the opinion that the differentiated tariff is an efficient approach to popularise the separate collection of waste, which is proven by the global experience. However, Kazakhstan does not have a relevant legal framework.
“There is the methodology for tariff making. But who will calculate the difference between the tariff of sorted and unsorted waste collection? Should it be two or three-fold? So, there are many pitfalls here. It may be a little early now, but it should be done,” said Ryskulova and added that she is concerned about the consequences the decision may lead to.
She suggested a hypothetical situation. Residents of Almaty are told: ‘If you sort your waste, you will pay less, if you don’t sort, you will pay more.”
“The people will have a reasonable question, ‘Ok, we want to sort waste, but what about the infrastructure?’ Do you know what I mean? So, it requires a reasonable approach: we need to develop the infrastructure. And our akimat (mayor’s office) is responsible for the infrastructure. It is not the problem of waste removal companies, but of the akimat itself,” Ryskulova said.
Vice Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Kazakhstan Mansur Oshurbayev focused on the infrastructure, or, rather, containers. According to him, containers used in Kazakhstan are old and less informative.
“A container must speak for itself, ‘Drop your mixed waste here’, ‘Drop your kitchen waste here’,” the vice minister said.
But installation of containers and development of this sector in general (the sector is now underdeveloped, the vice minister makes no secret of it) is impossible without the rise in the tariff. Meanwhile, Oshurbayev noted that the state keeps on solving these issues.
“Since the beginning of the year, nearly 200 billion Kazakh tenge (421.8 million dollars) were allocated to develop the waste sector: to build waste sorting and waste recycling plants, procure waste-removal trucks and install containers. This is a huge amount,” the vice minister said.
But authors of Energyprom.kz are pessimistic about the initiative to allocate billions of tenge from the budget: “Will there be a queue of those asking for money after almost 1.5 years of non-functioning state funding system and after over 100 private companies that collected and recycled MSW went bankrupt and closed?”
Ready for the rise?
CABAR.asia held a poll via Google forms among 100 Kazakhstanis from different regions of the country.
As expected, almost one half of the respondents took the rise in waste collection fee without enthusiasm.
The opinion of the majority of respondents (74 per cent) was the same as the expert opinion – the rise in the waste removal fee will not lead to a safe and effective waste management.
The opinion of respondents about the waste fee they were willing to pay monthly divided. The majority (40 per cent) agreed to pay 200 to 500 tenge (0.42 to 1.05 dollars). One of the respondents (was included into ‘Other’ in the infographics) was willing to pay the highest of the mentioned amounts – 2,000 tenge (4.2 dollars).
The respondents took the separate collection of waste positively, but only 8 per cent live according to the zero waste principle.
Seventy-one per cent of respondents do not throw out clothing at landfills, but rather give it for charity. It shows that respondents have a certain level of environmental awareness. Just like experts, the respondents suggested to carry out information campaigns among people (35 per cent) and to improve the infrastructure (25 per cent) in order to raise public awareness of safe and effective MSW management.
Illustrative photo: Tatiana Trubacheva