Legal regulations of industrial solid waste management in Serbia: Challenges on the way of developing the circular economy

The management of industrial solid waste is regulated through several legal acts in Serbia, and in the last few years intensive work has been done to improve the legal norms that regulate the conversion of waste into materials that are no longer waste, in order to achieve the goals, set by the Green Agenda and the National Waste Management Plan. This paper provides an overview of the legal regulations which are regulating waste management, with special reference to acts and articles of acts that regulate the reuse and recovery of solid industrial waste. Possible obstacles and doubts that may arise when interpreting legal provisions are listed, with a focus on similarities and differences in the guidelines for converting waste into a by-product and material with and of waste status, the possibility of hazardous waste recovery, and the specifics of importing waste that is no longer waste into Serbia from one of the countries of the European Union. Through an example of converting fly ash into a useful cementitious raw material, some difficulties that have been encountered so far in practice are illustrated. In the conclusion of this paper, certain measures were proposed to overcome the mentioned obstacles in the implementation of the circular economy through the encouragement of the recovery of industrial waste.