The Impact of Waste Management in the Macroeconomic Performance

Abstract

Public attention to solid waste management has increased dramatically over the past decade in Europe because of the fact that the economic development has had its impact in consume. This increase in consume has affected to the production of different waste and therefore the necessity to manage them through different necessary policies of each country. Currently, Albania is a potential candidate country to be part of European Union. With the assignment of the Stabilization-Association Agreement, in 2006, the government undertook a series of commitments, where some of them are relative to taking into consideration the environment values during the decision-making process, in line with the sixth Action Program for the Environment, 2002. This paper provides an overview of recent trends in solid waste and management and the related public policy issues, in some cases combined with the economics literature related to this issues, in Europe and in particular in Albania. The main issues that will be treated in this paper are the public policies in Albania for solid waste and management. Is Albania completely ready for their management or not yet? The first part of this paper will give a theoretical overview of solid waste and of the ways used for their management as well as the economics literature related to the issues of the paper. A literature review will describe the recent trends in solid waste in some of the countries of European Union that have undertaken a lot of waste management policies and that have taken economic profit from this industry. The second part of the paper will focus in the Albanian case. Taking into consideration that Albania is a potential country to be integrated to European Union, we have commitment to complete also the waste management, in the framework of environmental issues. Also a very important part will focus in the impact of this issue to GDP growth of the country. In the end we will focus in some conclusions and also in recommendations about these important issues.