EVOLUTION OF EUROPEAN WASTE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES: AN INFORMAL SECTOR PERSPECTIVE

Human progress has been intrinsically influenced in time by the availability and seriousness by which mankind treated the issue of cleanness and sanitation of human settlements, in general of wastes. Given the direct negative impact on public health, the improper waste management affected the history of mankind in different ways, causing, from epidemics of incurable diseases, up to falls of great empires. The research on the evolution of waste management practices pursues to identify the factors that have generated the development of waste management methods and techniques, the determination of the manner in which the technical progress and innovation have contributed to the modernization of the practices in the field, to the analysis of the part played by the public authorities and society in general in the proliferation of coherent waste management practices, to the evaluation of the informal sector's contribution to the evolution of waste collection systems and to the comparison between various perspectives of the impact that wastes have on the environment and human health. This research used the indirect observation research method by analyzing the foreign literature and the various documents available in the virtual environment, on the websites of certain organizations involved in the wide and complex issue of waste management.