To be honest, across all Balkan countries that I’ve visited so far, Albania is on my personal top list and seems that I left my heart between Tirana and Shkoder mountains forever. But love is irrational feeling, you know? While well-developed recycling infrastructure is extremely important for me, in Albania it’s a big-big challenge to find a recycling point (except, maybe in Tirana). But let me share my findings with you, as well as examples of photos of recycling bins, that can help you to keep your sustainable habits during the travel across this wonderful country!

80% of urban waste in Albania is deposited into landfills: this is the main method of managing waste. And more than half of this waste goes to illegal dumping (especially in small towns or villages, where there is no waste collection service provided at all). Also, it’s quite common to burn waste in the open (which has very bad ecological and health consequences). In the winter season air quality is extremely poor mostly because of the burning waste.
According to Eurostate up to 18.9 % of municipal waste in 2022 was collected for recycling. Recycling in Albania is mainly managed by informal waste pickers, who collect waste from dumpsites and bins. Separate collection for recycling is not common. The recycling industry operates with only 15-30% of capacity. And also there is 1 official incinerator that burns around 1% of waste only. Albania tries to implement new solutions to fight the waste problem. For example, installing new underground waste bins (embedded in asphalt) in Tirana in May 2022. But it’s definitely not enough – waste is a big issue (and opportunity!) for the country.

The capital of the country – Tirana – has a relatively good recycling infrastructure compared with other cities in Albania. Green recycling bins are installed widely across Tirana to collect plastic, metal, paper, and glass – find photos in the gallery. Blue bins are often located nearby the green ones and are used for “other” waste (non-recyclable, in fact).

Gjirokastra – the ancient city that attracts thousands of tourists – is in second place in my recycling infrastructure rating in Albania: in the city center there is a big recycling spot that includes also rare waste types such as E-Waste. And also we noticed recycling infrastructure near “Blue Eye” tourists’ point of attraction. Find photos in the gallery.

Sea cities such as Durres, Saranda, Vlora, and Ksamil have very poor (close to zero) recycling infrastructure. Only in Saranda, I managed to find only one big container to collect Plastic bottles and metal cans – find in the photo in the gallery. In other cities – nothing. Which is definitely an opportunity for improvement!

Despite the good bicycle infrastructure and EU-outlook Shkoder city does not have any recycling bins at all except one small container near the supermarket. Find the photo and address in the photo gallery – maybe it can be helpful for you as well. My guess is that the content of this bin is used by internal waste pickers.

For a short-term trips I will recommend to “export” popular waste types to Tirana (like plastic bottles, for example), while rare fractions I will suggest to take back to your home country to increase chances for recycling of your waste.

Due to the low-level recycling rate and poor waste management infrastructure in general there is no separate collection for batteries, E-waste, textile, or organic in Albania, unfortunately (or at least I did not manage to find it.

Let me know in the comments or in my Instagram page if you know some useful information to share with this community – so I can add it here.