Legal regulation of the integration of industrial and consumer waste into the circular economy of Russia and other countries

Similar to the European Union using a system of directives to regulate how waste is managed, Russia has adopted the Federal Law “On Industrial and Consumer Waste” as a standard-setting legal tool in its waste policy. The EU directives set out shared objectives for mitigating the waste crisis, while leaving the member states free to decide about precise implementation methods. Directive 2008/98/EC establishes a clear hierarchy of priorities in addressing waste issues, which includes prevention, preparing for reuse, recycling, other recovery, and disposal. In contrast, Russian legislation lacks detailed provisions for dealing with waste. The EU law also defines criteria for classifying by-products of industrial processes and prescribes a legal procedure for granting the end-of-waste status under certain conditions, thereby reducing the regulatory burden, yet not precluding litigating disputes in court over the classification of substances as waste or by-products. In the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union, such as Belarus and Kazakhstan, the regulations on handling waste align, in many ways, with Russia’s approach, but they still have some distinctive features. Belarusian law distinguishes secondary material resources from other types of waste, and Kazakhstan has developed well-elaborated regulatory standards for qualifying waste as products. Therefore, both Russian and foreign legal systems give priority to classifying substances as waste, which may complicate the transition to a circular economy.