Amount of waste produced by Czechs rising

Prague, Oct 11 (CTK) - Every inhabitant of the 10.5-million Czech Republic produced 320 kilos of municipal waste and sorted out 46 kilos of it in 2011, according to the data that the Czech Statistical Office (CSU) released Thursday.

The volume of waste thrown directly to dustbins has been slightly rising in the past few years, by 1 percent year-on-year, while waste sorting has been stagnating, the CSU says.

Some 13 percent of waste from Czech households were sorted out in special containers last year.

"Fifteen kilogrammes of paper, 11 kg of glass, 10 kg of plastics, five kg of metal and five kg of another separated waste were sorted out per capita," Miroslava Vesela, from the CSU farming, forestry and environment section, told reporters Thursday.

She positively assessed that the amount of sorted waste had increased from 16 kilos in 2002 to 46 kilos per capita last year.

However, this trend has ben stagnating since 2008 (44 kilos of sorted municipal waste).

Last year, 3.4 million tonnes of municipal waste, which includes waste from households, small entrepreneurs, schools, offices and municipal cleaning, were produced in the Czech Republic. Hazardous waste made up 4500 tonnes.

The total waste in the country decreased by 2 percent from 2010 to 23.6 million tonnes in 2011. Hazardous waste amounted to 1.5 million tonnes in total last year.

Moreover, 442,000 tonnes of waste were imported to the Czech Republic for further processing and 2.3 million tonnes were exported.

The waste export has been steeply rising, while the import has been relatively stable for several years.

In 2011, the CSU for the first time collected data on secondary or processed raw material, which is used repeatedly in production as starting material after their initial use or wear.

The total production of secondary raw material was 21.2 million tonnes. However, the CSU would need data from previous years for further analyses.

The issue is important as 1500 firms with 25,000 employees in total deal with the processing of and trading in secondary raw material in the Czech Republic, the CSU points out.