ABSTRACT
The need for the protection of the environment gets increasingly urgent. The paper focuses on municipal waste, which can be considered as one of the most problematic elements of the environment in many regions of our planet, as mentioned in the EAP, stating that waste should be treated as a source and demanding the reduction of waste creation per inhabitant. Energetic evaluation of waste will be limited to non-recyclable materials. Storage of waste that can be recycled or composted should be eliminated. To achieve this, it is necessary to promote and comply with environmental protection and the hierarchy of waste economy, which is considered the basis of European policy in the field of waste management. This basis is orientated towards minimizing the negative effects of waste on the living environment and increasing and optimizing sources in the waste economy. Waste economy hierarchy allows storage—only in case that there is no chance to avoid waste rising. This should be the priority of the waste economy. Moreover, repeated use and recycling of materials should be preferred within energetic waste evaluation from (possible and proper) environmental, technical, and economic perspectives. In the field of waste economy, Slovakia is significantly behind many EU countries due to the low level of recycling and a high level of municipal waste storage. According to the European Commission, the problem is in the system of collection and separation of waste.
