Cleaning up the Planet: The Circular Economy

2 September 2021

Cleaning up the Planet: The Circular Economy

Key conclusions

Creating a system to incorporate waste into circulation reduces the amount of ‘cleaning’

“Waste isn’t something that is unnecessary. It’s a valuable product that needs to be incorporated into economic circulation. The more we do this, the less we’ll deplete our country’s natural resources [...] We certainly need to improve the quality of life by decreasing waste generation, reducing its volume, and, as a result, minimizing the volume of its disposal,” Russian Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Dmitry Tetenkin said.

“We are largely responsible for the technological component [...] Our job is to increase the volume of equipment, specifically high-tech equipment, that is produced in the Russian Federation so that it’s cheaper to create such [waste disposal] facilities and so that our public law company [...] can effectively help business establish such facilities on our territory as quickly and efficiently as possible,” Russian State Secretary and Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Viktor Yevtukhov said.

A circular economy cannot be created without introducing standards for the use of recyclables

“We need a market for recyclable materials […] We sort 20% and recycle 5% [...] So the essence of the new Circular Economy federal project is precisely to create this market [...] We need to say how much our industry will be ready now and potentially in the future to accept recyclable materials in order to produce new types of products,” Russian Environmental Operator Public Law Company General Director Denis Butsayev said.

Waste treatment needs to be organized locally

“The Far East makes up virtually half the territory of the Russian Federation. Ten percent of the inhabitants of the Russian Federation live in the territory of the Far East and the Arctic. And, of course, the definitive answer to your question – should there be a circular economy here – is certainly yes,” Russian Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Dmitry Tetenkin said.

“Our job is to achieve a sustainable result here through digital and the involvement of residents and business […] Because otherwise we run the risk that these waste management megaprojects in the Far East are unrealistic,” Kamchatka Territory Governor Vladimir Solodov said.

“I think we need to discuss the question of where we are going in the Far East. That is to say, what is of utmost importance: this nevertheless means material utilization, energy utilization, and creating good modern landfills that take into account the number of territories,” Russian State Secretary and Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Viktor Yevtukhov said.

Problems

Separate waste collection and waste disposal control is not well organized in Russia

“Separate collection is the foundation of the circular economy [...] In the Russian Federation, only 15% of citizens are able to have household waste collected separately,” Russian Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Dmitry Tetenkin said.

“Nothing will work without control [...] We collect 197 billion [tonnes] from citizens, and 3.7 [billion tonnes] from industry, which must pay the environmental fee. I’d like to remind you that the entire waste management industry is divided into two parts: everything related to recycling [...] from citizens, and everything related to disposal should come from the waste disposal facility. If there’s no money in disposal, then there’s no disposal,” Russian Environmental Operator Public Law Company General Director Denis Butsayev said.

Inability to completely abandon plastic

“We are responsible for different industries that produce entirely different products from different materials and different raw commodities […] When we talk about abandoning certain types of packaging […], it’s good that we can pack everything in paper, but it’s physically impossible,” Russian State Secretary and Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Viktor Yevtukhov said.

People have a negative attitude towards energy recovery

“Energy recovery is not yet prevalent in the minds of citizens because they have such a wary attitude towards it […] Neither we nor the rest of the world will move away from this type of waste disposal in the coming years [...] I think we will learn how to select waste as much as we can [...] but one way or another some tailings will remain and we will still have to do something with these tailings,” Russian State Secretary and Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Viktor Yevtukhov said.

The Arctic and Far East don’t have enough waste processing plants

“When we talk about collected plastic or metal, […] it’s extremely expensive to extract. Holding onto it means disposing of it again. It means recycling it. There should be tools that would make it possible to build recycling facilities in a fairly compact way. We are actively working on sites for eco-technology parks now with the Ministry of Industry and Trade […] as part of the circular economy […] There are many gaps in regulation,” Russian Environmental Operator Public Law Company General Director Denis Butsayev said.

Legislative regulation lags behind environmental needs

“The federal project [...] is not about the circular economy. It’s about the system for handling municipal solid waste […] What is a circular economy and how does it differ from the construction of municipal solid waste infrastructure facilities? It creates a market for recyclables [...] If there’s nowhere to go with it, then it doesn’t work,” Russian Environmental Operator Public Law Company General Director Denis Butsayev said.

Solutions

New legislative initiatives will bridge the gap between modern environmental requirements and current regulations

“We have concluded that the norms and rules currently in Federal Law 89 [...] are not fully and not always able to solve the tasks that we set for ourselves based on our approaches to the circular economy. In this regard, the ministry has proposed that the government consider the possibility of adopting the Federal Law ‘On the Circular Economy’,” Russian Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Dmitry Tetenkin said.

“The process of abandoning what is recycled or is impossible to extract […] should be a very delicate one […] It [a ban on the use of certain types of packaging] shouldn’t be viewed as ‘we took it and turned everything off starting from tomorrow’. It should be viewed as a target that we should reach within a few years, allowing industry and manufacturers to move to more sustainable types of packaging. And they should be encouraged not by a ban, but by the rate of the environmental fee,” Russian Environmental Operator Public Law Company General Director Denis Butsayev said.

A responsible attitude towards separate waste collection needs to be fostered among the public and business

“People are willing to pay higher tariffs if we say that we will ensure eco-friendly and complete recycling in exchange. And until we get each citizen involved in this problem, we won’t find a sustainable solution,” Kamchatka Territory Governor Vladimir Solodov said.

“We would like to suggest that all regional operators who sort garbage contact us, and we will remove up to 1 tonne of batteries free of charge from anywhere in the country and [...] transport them to recycling plants and dispose of them,” Duracell Russia General Director Yury Korotayev said.

Innovations in the waste collection, sorting, and disposal process

“We have now reached an import substitution level of around 60–65%. It’s clear that this is mainly equipment that our factories from the engineering industry are producing. Now the goal […] is to produce high-tech equipment [...] In St. Petersburg, the company Intelligent Systems produced a robotic arm with integrated artificial intelligence, which sorts 20 types of different packaging [...] There are more examples of such high-precision separators,” Russian State Secretary and Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Viktor Yevtukhov said.

“Technology is advancing and more and more compact units are emerging. We are now in the process with our initiators of purchasing the simplest equipment that allows you to make pens from plastic bottle caps,” Kamchatka Territory Governor Vladimir Solodov said.

Energy recovery of plastic

“Plastic cannot be recycled multiple times and ultimately has to go somewhere. But for this we have energy recovery, which […] we are supporting […] We are debating about how many modern waste incineration plants should be built in our country. As you know, five are already under construction, and we are talking about [building] 25 […] I’d like to remind you that […] there are now more than 1,700 waste incineration plants in the world […] In Switzerland, there are 30, in Japan – 800, and in China – 280,” Russian State Secretary and Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Viktor Yevtukhov said.

“The case that we are actively developing now is the integration of waste incineration technologies with the energy technologies of coal-fired power plants [...] There is great potential here because the energy sector of the Far East has coal-fired power plants that have substantial investment programmes and there is a tariff that is subsidized by the First Pricing Zone,” InfraVEB Director Aleksandr Finogenov said.

For more, see the Roscongress Foundation’s Information and Analytical System roscongress.org

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