The Economics of Waste Recycling in Iraq: Wasted Resources and Lost Opportunities

Abstract

The issue of remediation and recycling wastes in contemporary civilization is of a paramount importance economically, this is because the human leaves behind him a huge amount of waste in various types through his consumption and his daily life practices and these wastes are handled incorrectly around the world. This has led to the destruction of many components of the environment as well as the tremendous waste of available resources in the recycling and re-processing operations of different types of wastes, such as reuse it as raw materials again or reuse it in production of electric power through flammable types. In Iraq, especially after 2003, this problem takes serious trends, with increasing human consumption and with great economic openness, which led to a complex problem through pollution of the environment, waste of resources and lack of vision and mechanisms to deal with the huge quantities of waste and inability of the private sector to contribute in solving this problem as it fits with the size of the daily flow of inhabitants of large and small cities, as well as inhabitants of the suburbs and countryside. As this requires a clear path to activate the business sector related to recycling in an integrated way with other economic sectors, and this is can be done through backward and forward connections by creating an economic sector with the participation of governmental and private efforts that rise to the scale of the problem and find the correct way to the proper solution to this economic path in a way that provides opportunities and invests resources and limit their waste.