I spent sometime in Kosovo as a peacekeeper.

One of the immediate things an American or western European will notice (or did around the time of the war and for 10 years after) was the amount of pollution. Both from their coal fired plants and lack of any waste management.

The coal plants would pile the coal waste byproduct (I think it's coke). Since the infrastructure was weak and money in short hand the pile just kept growing. Last night I was near it it was spilling into a small waterway and also starting to over take a gypsy (Roma) camp. It was unreal.

As for trash they would just pile it locally and burn. This is fairly common in poor parts of the world. I ran over a 5 foot pile of diapers once in my M113A3, that wasn't good all these diapers jammed into the tracks.

I'm sure it's better now, I believe they have started to make progress.