Integrated MSW management system in the Russian Federation: problems of interpretation and formation

Abstract

The object of the study is the formation of an integrated MSW management system within the framework of the national project "Ecology" and the federal project "Integrated Solid Municipal Waste management System". The subject of the study is organizational, methodological, legal, financial, economic, industrial and technological problems that make it difficult at the federal and regional levels to achieve the annual and final planned indicators of these projects in 2024. The purpose of the work is a general description of the integrated MSW management system being created, as well as to identify the main problems of its formation in the new financial and economic environment reality. The author considers the planned target indicators of the federal project and their correlation with the indicators achieved in 2019-2022. Special attention is paid to the three-fold decrease in the initial planned indicator for recycling, which occurred due to insufficient development of the MSW recycling infrastructure, and the threat of non-fulfillment of the utilization indicator in 2024, which persists even after that. The methodological basis of research is an integrated approach that allowed the use of methods of systematic, comparative, factorial and economic-statistical analysis, content analysis, and also synthesis. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the disclosure of an integrated system as a set of methods for handling MSW, located among themselves in a certain hierarchy of applications, the last of which is waste disposal, and the smaller its scale and the damage caused to the environment, the greater the level of consistency the system demonstrates. Neutralization and energy utilization do not fully solve the problem, since they leave a lot of harmful combustion products. Recycling is much more environmentally friendly, the degree of development of which should be considered as the second important criterion for the development of an integrated waste management system. The reduction by the curators of the MSW management reform of the initially stated recycling targets for 2024 by three times is actually an official recognition of the global underdevelopment of the domestic recycling and processing industry and the lack of real state participation in its formation and development.