Relationships of Food Packaging Waste Processing and Costs with Environmental Protection in Iasi County

摘要

The estimated food waste in Romania is around 1/3 of that generated. When we are discussing the food packaging waste generation, the data are really foggy. The aim of the present study was to compare the food packaging waste generation in two areas of Iasi county (one urban, one rural), in a close relationship with the costs of their collection and processing, as well as their direct impact on environment. There is a clear average difference of 89 % between the food generation waste amounts in urban and rural case-study areas. The same time, there exists also a huge difference of 75% between the food packaging generation waste amounts in same urban and rural areas. The food packaging waste generation represents 22.17% as average when compared to total waste generation in urban area. On the other hand, for the rural area, the food packaging waste generation represents 72.18% as average when compared to total waste generation. Moreover, we tried to estimate the costs for removing the waste from the two case-study areas. In the rural area, the costs are almost 99% lower than in urban one, since the collecting of garbage is done rarely during the year. In this case, the impact on environment seems to be harder in rural area. On contrary, there is a lot of packaging waste (including food packaging waste) spread all over the urban area, despite the involvement of local authorities in active removal. The lack of responsibility and of basic education might be the explanations for such a strange situation.