Sustainability Efforts of the Hungarian Defence Forces in the Field of Waste Management

Abstract

It comes with our modern way of life and development that more and more waste is produced, and also as a result of advancing industrial activities and technology, dangerous waste, which requires special treatment, causes increasingly more serious problems, due to their harmful effects on human health and the environment. Armed forces form a special segment among dangerous waste producers, generating a lot of waste both during their subsistence and preparation as well as in actual military conflicts, whose placement, storage and elimination require special forms of handling. All the above are made even more difficult by the fact that in times of armed conflicts, environmental protection and safe waste management rank rather low among the priorities, although in the past 50 years, ecological aspects of warfare are of growing emphasis. The paper attempts to present the legislative background pertaining to the Hungarian Defence Forces, specific activities applied within the framework of HDF, whose purpose is to reduce damages to the environment to the least possible level and also to ensure that maintaining peace and protecting our country do not automatically entail environmental damage.