Recycling in Turkey

Recycling is the process of collecting and processing materials that would otherwise be thrown away as trash and turning them into new products. Recycling can benefit your community and the environment. Recyclable materials include many kinds of glass, paper, metal, plastic, textiles and electronics.

The composting or other reuse of bio-gradable waste, such as food or garden waste, is also considered recycling. Materials to be recycled are either brought to a collection center or picked up from the curbside, then sorted, cleaned, and reprocessed into new materials bound for manufacturing.

Public and political recycling awareness is growing in Turkey as the environment and urban planning ministry and municipalities promote projects on reusing waste materials and encouraging citizen habit change. People said that the Turks were wasteful and didn’t know what recycling or being green meant nor do they want to understand this. It can be true sometimes because the notion of recycling has not been so effective in Turkish people’s mind. For example separated bins for recycling waste are quite new in Turkey. But in comparison to other European countries Turkey recycles many more things in an ‘informal’ manner.

In Turkey, if something can be re-used chances are it will be: the Eskici, known as the rag and bone man, passes in front of houses at least once per week to collect unwanted furniture, broken electronic goods and anything else that isn’t needed any more; another man, Çöpçü, patiently combs through rubbish bins to salvage empty plastic bottles; a neighbour takes away all the empty glass jars to fill with home-made pickles and sauces.

The overall volume of rubbish that actually gets sent to landfills is much lower than in many other countries. Official figures confirm this observation. In 2008 (the latest year for which measurements are available) Turkey produced 428kg municipal waste per inhabitant per year, which is lower than every country in the EU-15. For comparison, Sweden produced 515kg per capita, UK produced 565kg per capita, and Spain produced 575kg per capita. The ‘winner’ is Denmark, which produced 802kg of waste per person.

What is thrown away in the bins is minimal and what can be salvaged is taken by the Eskici and the Çöpçü, who collect plastic and paper products.  They then take the scrap and the waste plastic and paper to collection points and are paid for what they bring.  This waste is then taken and recycled, but it’s not seen as recycling but a job and a way of life here.

So you see that recycling is a wide topic in Turkey and there are many ways of dealing with trash and keeping the city clean. It is a country which although may not seem to be as involved in the process of re-using old materials at first glance it definitely can boast as a place where environment is one of its most important notions.

Umut Açıkgöz

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