K.Y. Kushnir, N.B. Nefedyev, S.G. Psyurnichenko, Ministry of Natural Resources of the RF, Moscow, Russia

 Over the last few years in the Russian Federation the amount of wastes produced has steadily increased, but a share of their involvement in the economic turnover as a percentage of the produced wastes remained insufficient, and in some groups of wastes it was low and even very low.

Currently, the main sector of economic activity is mining industry, which mainly focuses on production and extraction of mineral resources, and their primary processing in order to obtain raw materials, suitable for production of final products. This process is accompanied by formation and accumulation of wastes in the form of waste rock, slag, sludge, etc. By that, a share of wastes from mining and processing industries (3,2 billion tons) is about 70% of the total amount of industrial wastes, or slightly below 70% of the total amount of wastes produced in Russia annually