MPs and workers of Office of the Legislative Chamber, specialists of ministries and departments, as well as enterprises participated at the event.

Participants noted that Uzbekistan gradually implement policy directed at protecting environment and health of population, rational use of natural resources and ensuring ecologic security. Introduction of modern technologies into production sector during independence years helped to cut the volume of emission by 2.1 times and output of sewage twice.

The country conducts concrete work on waste management based on requirements of Basel Convention “On the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal”. In particular, Uzbekistan adopted law “On waste” and implemented a project on development of programme on stable clean production and its implementation in Uzbekistan. In cooperation with the UNDP, national strategy and programme on waste management in Uzbekistan were developed.

However, there are problems in this area. According to the statistics, annually 100 million tonnes of industrial waste (of which 14% are toxic waste) and 35 million tonnes of domestic waste formed in the country. There are 12,000 hectares of waste depots, which store 2 billion tonnes of production, construction and domestic waste.

To solve these problems, it is necessary to develop sphere on waste management, introduce modern wasteless and low-waste technologies due to modernization of production capacities, create favourable conditions to those, who work in this area. There is also need to improve legislation in the area. The law “On waste” does not fully explains mechanisms on waste management in Uzbekistan and it is necessary to introduce changes and amendments to it.

The amendments will be directed to improve legal base on organization of effective infrastructure for collection of waste, assortment, processing, utilization and repeated use, etc. It was noted that it is vital to cut waste volume in process of production and consumption, processing and repeated use, saving natural resources, etc.

The roundtable developed concrete recommendations directed at improving legislation in the area and adopted a resolution of the Committee on ecology and environment issues of the Legislative Committee.