Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia (SORS)

Serbian Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA)

Environmental statistics and accounts division

Milana Rakića 5, 11000 Belgrade

Data on waste generation by waste category (EWC-STAT) and economic activity for reference 2020 are based on annual statistical survey on waste generation, which cover NACE sections (A-S). The amount of waste generated by household is estimated starting from municipal waste.

Data on waste treatment collected trough to survey on waste treatment which relevant waste treatment facilities in the Republic of Serbia are identified from the directory of the permits for waste management operated by Serbian Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA).

For 2020 reference year, SORS partly reported data in data set Number and capacity of recovery and disposal facilities.

The Republic of Serbia currently has 9 sanitary landfills that meet EU standards. Landfill capacities are not available because their construction takes place in stages.

In the process of joining the European Union, the Republic of Serbia is making great efforts to achieve EU standards in this area. Unfortunately, implementation is a very expensive and demanding process, so in the pre-accession negotiations, Serbia asked for the postponement of full harmonization.

Data are collected according to the List of Waste and published according to the statistical classification of waste (EWC-Stat).

Statistical units of observation are local units and enterprises from all NACE sections as well as business entities that have the appropriate permit for treatment and disposal of waste.

- List of Waste (LoW). It is defined by Commission Decision of 18 December 2014 amending Decision 2000/532/EC on the list of waste pursuant to Directive 2008/98/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council;

- The European Statistical Classification of Waste (EWC-Stat). Published within Annex 1 of Commission Regulation (EU) No 849/2010 of 27 September 2010 amending Regulation (EC) No 2150/2002 of the European Parliament and of the Council on waste statistics;

- Waste recovery operations (Operations R). Set out in Annex 2 of Directive 2008/98/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 November 2008 on waste and repealing certain Directives;

- Waste disposal operations (Operations D). Set out in Annex 1 of Directive 2008/98/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 November 2008 on waste and repealing certain Directives;

- Standard Classification of Activities (NACE Rev. 2).

Data on hazardous and non-hazardous waste are for all NACE sections (A-S) and households.

Waste means “any substance or object which the holder discards or intends or is required to discard“(Waste Framework Directive).

Hazardous waste is waste, which by its origin, composition or concentration of hazardous materials, can cause danger to environment and human health and has at least one of the hazardous characteristics regulated by law, including its packaging.

Non-hazardous waste is the waste that has no characteristics of hazardous waste.

Waste treatment includes mechanical, thermal, chemical or biological processes, including waste sorting, which change the characteristics of waste in order to reduce the bulk or hazardous characteristics, to facilitate waste handling or to support recycling. It also covers the recovery and recycling of waste.

Incineration is thermal treatment of waste in a stationary or mobile plant with or without use of energy generated by the incineration.

Waste disposal is any process or method applicable when regeneration, recycling, recovery or use of alternative energy sources cannot be performed according to the D list (code for types of disposal operations).

Waste recovery refers to any procedure or method providing recovery of waste according to the R list (code for types of recovery operations).

Recycling is the repeated treatment of waste in the production process, intended for original or some other purpose, excluding energy purposes.

Landfill is a waste disposal site above or under the ground, including: internal disposal sites (landfill where the manufacturer discards its own waste in the place where the waste has been generated); permanent sites (more than one year) used for temporary waste storage, other than transfer stations and waste storages prior to treatment or reuse (period under three years) or waste storage prior to disposal (period under one year).

 Statistical units of observation are enterprises in NACE sections of (F-S) and local units in NACE sections of (A-E), which in average have 10 or more employees in the reference year.

The survey covers observation units that generate waste and manage waste in all NACE sections in the entire territory of the Republic of Serbia.

Republic of Serbia.

2010 - 2020

 Not applicable.

The source of data on waste is statistical survey on generated waste, treated waste and the capacity of the treatment plant for waste as well as an administrative source.

The coverage of the survey on waste generation for the  NACE sections (A-E) is complete for the local units with 10 and more employees, excluding  NACE division 38 – Waste collection, treatment and disposal activities that is completely covered. The survey covered about 5,000 observation units.

In the scope of survey on generated waste for the NACE sections of (F-S), there are enterprises.

The frame for the sample selection for the NACE sections (F-S) is based on the set of legal entities from the Statistical Business Register (SBR) that fulfilled the determined requests on the number of employees and value of turnover. Stratification of frame units for sample selection is done by activity, number of employees and whether the units are enumerated (selected for sample on purpose) or not (random sample selection). Within the stratum, simple random sample was selected. Sample of 3554 units was allocated under the above stated conditions.

In the scope of survey on treated waste and waste treatment facilities, there are enterprises or local units that have the appropriate permit for the treatment and disposal of waste.

Waste from households was estimated by data collected from administrative sources. The structure of the waste obtained from statistical surveys.

Annually.

The method of data collection is a report, ie. the reporting unit fills a web or paper questionnaire based on the documentation and records it has at its disposal. The responsible person completes the questionnaire with the requested data in the first quarter of the current year for the previous year. In the case that for some data there is no adequate documentation and records, the expert evaluates. The completed questionnaire shall provide the reporting unit to the competent statistical authority in whose territory its seat is located by the deadline set in the annual plan.

Validation of data is done during the entire data processing from input to results. For the validation of the final set of data on generated and treated waste according to the Waste Statistics Regulation, the rules proposed by Eurostat, which are an integral part of the data processing, are applied.

SORS for conversion of wet sludge into dry condition amounts used Eurostat conversion factors, taking into account specific EWC waste category and specific NACE category.

For waste with code 19 08 05 it was reported in dry condition.

Table: Generated amount of wet and dry sludges, 2020 in Annex.

For other See Chapter 6.

Not applicable.

The Quality Policy document is available on the SORS website:

http://www.stat.gov.rs/en-US/o-nama/sistem-upravljanja-kvalitetom

Not applicable.

National Beneficiaries: 

Ministry of Environmental Protection, Environmental Associations, Non-Governmental Organizations, Internal Users for environmental accounts.

International beneficiaries: 

Eurostat, UN, European Environment Agency (EEA).

Not applicable.

SORS has provided all the mandatory variables according to the Regulation on Waste Statistics No. 2150/2002 / EC, with the exception of the capacity of the landfills.  A set of generated waste data includes all sectors of economic activity and household waste, and the set of data on the treated waste includes the treatment of waste by type of treatment.

Not applicable.

Measurement errors can occur when incorrect data are received from respondents are not corrected during reviewing. This can affect the precision of the quantities given.

Statistical units

Local units and enterprises have been used as statistical unit in the surveys of waste.

For the Construction and service sections (F-S) CA enterprises have been used as statistical unit.

There is a risk that several types of activities can occur at the same enterprises. This does not have any influence on the total amount, but may have on the distribution of waste between different sections.

Errors in precision of quantities

Waste conversion factors have been used if other units have been reported.

For data that were reported in m³ waste conversion factors took over from the Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia and were modified according to national specifics.

Data collection instrument

Since 2013 data on waste generated have been collected using two different questionnaires. In 2014 questionnaire on number and capacities waste treatment facilities was added.

Sampling frame

  - The sampling frame for 2020 was constructed using frozen version of Statistical Business Register (SBR) as in December 2019. Sampling frame units had the following characteristics:

 - Main activity belonged to the Construction (F) section and Services sections (G-S) upon NACE Rev. 2 classification of economic activities;

 - Corresponding legal entities were not closed, in liquidation process or bankrupt, according to the data in frozen version of SBR that is provided by Business Register Agency (APR).Corresponding legal entities (enterprises or entrepreneurs) had reported financial data for 2019 or were financed form the budget in 2019.

  Stratification

- Stratification of sampling frame units was done according to the type of the enterprise, NACE Rev. 2 classification of activities and the number of employees. Also, frame units were stratified to census units (selected with certainty) or not census units (randomly selected in the sample).

- Stratification of the frame units according to whether they were census ones or not was done following certain conditions. Units were selected with certainty (census), if they fulfilled at least one of the following conditions:

   1.They belonged to a stratum with less than 6 units;

   2.Their NACE activity was:

- in class 46.77 or in group 43.1;

- in groups 46.2, 46.3, 47.2 and they had 50 or more employees;

- In divisions 55, 56 and they had 50 or more employees.

  3.They had 250 or more employees.

Stratification of the frame units according to economic activity was into 14 NACE Rev. 2 sections: Construction (F) and Services (G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S).

Stratification of the frame units according to the number of employees was into three classes: 10 – 49 employees (b); 50 – 249 employees (c) and ≥250 employees (d).

Sample allocation and selection

Sample allocation of the frame was done using Bethel algorithm and auxiliary information from the previous survey. Further allocation of the sample in non-census strata was also done using Bethel algorithm.

Sample of 3554 units was allocated under the above stated conditions.

Within each non census stratum a sequential simple random sample was selected using permanent random numbers (with Uniform distribution on the interval (0.1). Starting point for selection was 0.25. 

Estimation procedure

The estimates of totals and standard errors (Horvitz-Thompson estimates) were calculated in the standard way for stratified simple random sample, as a sum of weighted sample values, where the weights were equal to the ratio of the total number of units and the number of sample units in the stratum.

 The estimation was performed with the following specificities:

 - The original weight was corrected for non-response, the weight was equal to the ratio of the total number of units in the stratum to the number of units in the realized sample;

 - Strata without responding units or strata with one responding unit, but with more than one unit in the planned sample, were collapsed with similar strata with respect to economic activity.

Collapsing of strata was in two iterations:

 - strata without responding units  were collapsed with strata of the same activity in such a way that the change of weights was minimal, and after that

 - strata with one responding unit  and with more than one unit in the planned sample, were collapsed with strata of the same activity and similar size class;

Enterprises that were potential outliers, with respect to generated waste were detected and they were treated.

Coefficients of variation for total generated waste and non-hazardous waste from the construction and service sectors are about 5%, while the estimation of hazardous waste is less reliable, with a coefficient of variation of 10%.

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 Over-coverage error is not significant.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

To prevent non-response in initial stage SORS sent reminder letters many of business entities, which not submit questionnaire in foreseen deadline.

Despite that activities non-response occurred in the survey but we assumed that amount of waste generated from small business entities is not significant and data representative.

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The audit policy is carried out in accordance with the General Policy of the Audit of the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia (Chapter 3 - Audit Policy).

The published data should be regarded as final, unless otherwise stated. Corrections and revisions might occur.

Not applicable.

 Preliminary data are available with a timeliness of T + 7 and final data of T + 12 months after the end of the reference year.

The first results are available with a timeliness of T + 7 months after the end of the reference year.

The final results are available with a timeliness of T+12 months after the end of the reference year.

The link is: https://www.stat.gov.rs/calendar/

Not applicable.

The methodology of the survey on generated and treated waste allows reporting according to the rules of the Waste Statistics Regulation No. 2150/2002/ EC and geographical comparability with the data of the countries of the European Union.

Not applicable.

Data on generated and treated waste according to the statistical classification of waste (EWC-Stat) and NACE are comparable from 2010.

The Republic of Serbia, as a candidate country for EU membership, was not able to provide all necessary data for reporting according to the Waste Statistics Regulation in 2012.

Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia, gradually expanded the scope of survey on generated and treated waste for the purposes of reporting under the Regulation on Waste Statistics.

First, the industry NACE sections (NACE B, C and D) that generate the largest amounts of waste were included, and then, in 2014, the missing sections and waste from households were included. NACE A 'Agriculture, forestry and fishing' was added in 2016.

Data from the Waste survey according to the Statistical Classification of Waste (EWC-Stat) and NACE exist since 2010 of the reference year.

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https://www.stat.gov.rs/en-us/oblasti/zivotna-sredina/

https://www.stat.gov.rs/en-us/oblasti/zivotna-sredina/otpad-i-opasne-hemikalije/

https://data.stat.gov.rs/?caller=25&languageCode=en-US

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Short methodologies are available on the SORS website:

https://www.stat.gov.rs/en-us/istrazivanja/methodology-and-documents/?a=25&s=0

  https://data.stat.gov.rs/Metadata/25_Zivotna%20sredina/Html/S011061_ESMS_G0_2017_3.html

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Not applicable.

The burden on respondents could not be quantified. Enterprises were not asked to register the time spent for filling in the questionnaire.

Survey results are published in aggregate with respect to obligations to protect individual information in accordance with the Law on Official Statistics ("Off. Gazette of RS", No. 104/2009)

Statistical confidentiality is defined by the Law on Official Statistics (Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia, No. 104/2009).

Data that allows statistical units to be identified, either directly or indirectly, are not published. Data is published at the level at which they are not confidential.

Not applicable.