Plastic Waste Management in North Macedonia: A Comparative Analysis With Western Balkans And Selected EU Countries

Ivana Ivanova () and Elena Makrevska Disoska ()
Additional contact information
Ivana Ivanova: Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Faculty of Economics – Skopje
Elena Makrevska Disoska: Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Faculty of Economics – Skopje

No 16, Proceedings of the 5th International Conference "Economic and Business Trends Shaping the Future" 2024 from Faculty of Economics-Skopje, Ss Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje

Abstract: This paper aims to compare North Macedonia as an EU candidate country, to the Western Balkan countries in circular economy movements. It shows that the country still struggles with advancing circularity and is more focused on waste management practices, which also do not function well. Lack of waste separation, weight equipment, and qualitative waste data with limited access to funds, finance, and knowledge are possible reasons. Plastic as a future raw material which is gaining more attention at a global scale is not even a priority in the Macedonian economy. This paper gives for the first time a link between plastic waste and the circular economy in North Macedonia, highlighting the economic sectors and the role that EPR schemes are playing in increasing higher recycling rates, compared with other materials used for packaging. In the end, the authors compare the country with developed EU countries like Slovenia and Germany to examine the effects of higher communal fees would contribute to a more efficient municipal waste system, by using the municipal costs as a percentage of GDP per capita, minimal wage and Income and Living Conditions Indicator.

Keywords: Western Balkan; Municipal waste; Waste management; Circular economy; European Union; Republic of North Macedonia; Plastic; Resource productivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F63 Q52 Q53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15 pages
Date: 2024-12-15
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://repository.ukim.mk/bitstream/20.500.12188/ ... 20EU%20Countries.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aoh:conpro:2024:i:5:p:159-173

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Proceedings of the 5th International Conference "Economic and Business Trends Shaping the Future" 2024 from Faculty of Economics-Skopje, Ss Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Nikolina Palamidovska-Sterjadovska ().