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Preliminary Comparison Among Recycling Rates for Developed and Developing Countries: The Case of India, Israel, Italy and USA

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Abstract

This paper examines the recycling rates for waste management systems implemented in different countries: India, Israel, Italy and USA. Recycling rates range from a minimum of about 20% for Israel up to about 44% for Italy. Indian recycling rates are affected by a large informal sector providing waste reuse and recycling at source (about 15%) and at waste collection sites (15%), even as >30% of produced waste is not collected. A high level of uncontrolled dumping up to 70% was found for India. Substantial differences were found in the legal and legislative frameworks for waste management. Absence of clear definitions and classifications of waste was detected for India and Israel leading to inconsistent data concerning the amount and composition of waste generated. With the exception of Italy, in all the other countries a lack of a fully implemented political, legal and economic scheme for supporting efficient management in the waste sector was detected.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The landfill levy in Israel is charged with VAT. As the local authorities are non-profit institutions, VAT is an expense which they cannot be eligible for.

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Correspondence to Francesco Di Maria .

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© 2020 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

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Di Maria, F., Mersky, R.L., Daskal, S., Ayalon, O., Ghosh, S.K. (2020). Preliminary Comparison Among Recycling Rates for Developed and Developing Countries: The Case of India, Israel, Italy and USA. In: Ghosh, S. (eds) Sustainable Waste Management: Policies and Case Studies. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7071-7_1

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