Hazardous waste management in Turkey and a comparative analysis with European Union countries

Although legal and administrative basis of waste management in Turkey dates back to 1930s, application of normative principals about hazardous wastes has a more recent past. Turkey, which experiences capacity and application problems even in recovering, recycling or disposing of domestic wastes, is facing serious problems in waste-related issues which have special importance, like hazardous wastes in management processes. The most important handicaps preventing effective hazardous waste management in Turkey are problems like absence of a reliable country-wide waste inventory related to hazardous wastes, lack of institutional capacity, insufficient information provided to producers, lacking recovery and recycling possibilities besides insufficient number of disposal facilities, disregarding environmental risks, illegal and random discharging of wastes to the environment. However one of the most important problems in terms of managerial approach is the fact that central approach in hazardous waste management falls insufficient in coordinating among responsible units, operating supervision and control mechanisms and creating an within which sectoral partners can work out integrated management model sustainable policies. Comparing the hazardous waste practices in Turkey, which is a candidate in European Union membership process, with the relevant practices in other EU countries, inspite of the way taken in legislation harmonization with EU waste directives, many problems are experienced in practice and developing institutional capacity. However, Turkey draws attention in being more advanced in several aspects than some of the other countries which recently became members of the European Union. Key Words: Hazardous Wastes, Integrated Hazardous Waste Management, Ordinance on Control of Hazardous Waste, European Union Countries, Governance, Sustainable Environment