Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- Waste to energy technology - the process of generating electricity and heat as a result of incineration. About 450 factories in European countries use this technology.

According to the Ministry of Ecology, today more than 120 million tons of solid domestic waste (MSW) have been accumulated at 3.5 thousand landfills of the country and more than 5 million tons of solid waste is generated annually. At the same time, only 5% of solid waste is recycled, the remaining 95% are placed in landfills for storage and burial.

In addition, in the field of solid waste, there are such problems as:

1) weak legislative regulation of waste (there are no clear norms, requirements and penalties for improper handling of plastic waste); 2) lack of an established system for collecting and transporting waste; 3) a low level of interaction between authorized local authorities, akimats and businesses on the issues of sorting and processing solid waste.

This circumstance leads to an increase in the number of unauthorized landfills (about 9 thousand), as well as air pollution. In addition, due to improper operation of landfills, fires regularly occur (in 2019, 20 fires were recorded at landfills).

In this regard, the government of Kazakhstan expects that the implementation of Waste to Energy should contribute to: 1) reducing the amount of waste available to 30%; 2) generate electricity from waste (from one ton of waste - 300-400 kW of electricity); 3) reduction of waste disposal at landfills (solid household waste, medical and hazardous industrial waste).

It is noted that for the implementation of this technology, waste incineration plants will be built in 6 cities (Aktobe, Almaty, Atyrau, Nur-Sultan, Taraz and Shymkent). In case of successful implementation of pilot projects, plants will be built in other cities.

In general, experts emphasize that the measures planned by Nur-Sultan will, on the one hand, contribute to the environmental improvement of the country and attract foreign investment, on the other hand, to improve the production waste management system.