Turkey

Statistics

According to 2008 data of the Turkish Statistical Institute, which is in charge of establishing municipal waste statistics in Turkey, the total amount of annual municipal solid waste collected by 3,129 municipalities out of 3,225 that provide waste collection service was calculated at 24.36 million tons. Annual average waste amount per capita is about 2.5 pounds. The only regular data regarding household solid waste composition in all of Turkey belongs to 1993. According to this data, as much as 68.87 percent of the household waste in Turkey was organic in nature. The composition of household solid waste has also changed together with the increase in population, urbanization, industrialization, and transformations in the consumption field in Turkey since the 1990s. More up-to-date data regarding waste composition was obtained in 2006 by determining seven cities that could represent the general profile of Turkey and conducting solid waste characterization studies in these cities within the framework of the Solid Waste Master Plan Project of the Ministry of Environment and Forestry. According to this study, which aims to anticipate changes in the amount and composition of the wastes, the ratio of biodegradable waste (including kitchen waste, paper, cardboard, voluminous cardboard, park and garden wastes, and other flammable and other voluminous flammable wastes) had the highest level in all cities and its ratio was 55–65 percent. Kitchen wastes had the highest share in this ratio at 32–44 percent. The share of recyclable wastes was 18–37 percent. Where 17.11 percent of the population live below the limit of poverty in Turkey, the wastes of recyclable nature are more intensely collected in large cities and from those regions of these cities with high income levels.

Consumption and Waste Practices

Consumption practices of poor people mainly consisted of using their own resources, such as preparation of basic sustenance materials at home or bringing them from villages at certain time intervals; purchasing of loose products without packaging; or obtaining clothes from acquaintances, decreasing the amount of packaging wastes. In Turkey, proximity of some slum regions to dump sites is another issue that is prominent in the relation of the poor with waste and produces various dangers, as experienced in 1993 in the Hekimbasi waste yard in the Ümraniye district of Istanbul. In the field where garbage had been dumped for approximately 20 years, drift occurred because dumping was not well managed; 39 people were killed by the garbage fallout caused by methane gas accumulation under pressure, leading to an explosion. Rapid increase in population, together with urbanization, have changed the outlook of waste in Turkey. While in 1945, 4.7 million people (approximately one-fourth of the total population) lived in the cities, as of 2010 approximately 55 million people lived in the cities, with a total national population of approximately 73 million.

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