Türkiye's interest in the Environmentally Friendly Neighbor Card

Authorities from 43 municipalities, including metropolitan municipalities Konya, Adana and Mugla, examined the Environmentally Friendly Neighbor Card, the award-winning recycling project of Muratpasa Municipality in Antalya. Officials from municipalities all over Turkey, where presidents from different political parties are in charge, received information about the technological infrastructure of the project along with the field operation. Muratpasa Municipality's first award-winning recycling project of Türkiye, Environmentally Friendly Neighbor Card, started to be implemented in two pilot neighborhoods in April 2016 with the slogan of 'Don't throw away, save, let's win'. With the project, the residents of the district, who separated the packaging wastes at home, that is, at the source, as glass, paper, plastic and metal, started to earn money by giving the wastes they separated to the Environmental Neighbor Card teams passing by on a certain day and time. With the Environmentally Friendly Neighbor Card, the project spread to the entire district in 2017, after the success of the pilot studies, while creating financial resources that have never been seen before for home economies. In the period from April 2016 to the end of September 2022, the residents of the district earned 7 million 751 thousand 584 liras with the Environmental Neighbor Card. In the same period, 20 million 96 thousand 427 kilograms of waste was collected from house to house. In 2018, electrical and electronic wastes that could seriously harm the environment and human health were included in the Environmentally Friendly Neighbor Card project. As of September, 11 thousand 438 pieces of e-waste were collected, and 41 thousand 638 liras were loaded on the cards in return. After packaging waste and e-waste, vegetable waste oils were also included in the project in 2019. 32 thousand 749 liters of vegetable waste oil was collected within the scope of the Environmentally Friendly Neighbor Card. District residents earned 60 thousand 124 liras from vegetable waste oils. Last year, textile wastes were also included in the project. In this context, 114 thousand 602 kilograms of textile waste was collected and 219 thousand 313 liras were loaded on the cards.