Mr. Oliver Dulic, Minister of Environment, Mining and Spatial Planning, stated during the second annual Business Info Group organized conference on "Green Serbia - recycling industry, prospects for the Future" that green economy would create 10,000 new jobs by the end of the present government’s term, already employing 5,000 people.

Minister Dulic assessed that Serbia has a high unemployment rate and that the better organization in the field of environmental protection would help create significant number of jobs.

According to his information, only one half of Serbian proper is covered by organized garbage collection.

"It is good that all of the state licensed operators to purchase, transport and process electronic waste, scrap tires and car batteries were paid subsidies," stated Mr. Dulic, noting that the subsidies helped recycling industry investments.

Mr. Vincent Deger, head of EU’s Serbian Delegation, reminded that the EU recycling industry employs around 500,000 people. He cited the fact that each Euroepan citizen annualy produces araound half a ton of garbage, with EU total annual production being three billion tons. He cited that environmental protection is the European Union strategy, which is why EU is the reason world environmental technologies application leader.

Green economy represents a chance for Serbian economy

Recycling industry conference participants have pointed out that their problems are primarily the waste collection related. This is why they collected only about 3,000 of the 80,000 tons of electrical and electronic waste, with post-consumer PET packaging recyclers barely able to meet the five percent recycled packaging quota. Waste collection related problems are experienced by oil and hazardous waste recyclers as well. They all made their recommendations to the authorities to subsidize collectors, not just recycling industry.