1 Potential use of Mining and Mineral Processing waste in Trepça, Kosova Mihone Kerolli-Mustafa 1 , Afete Shala-Musliu 2 , Violeta Lajqi-Makolli 3 Abstract Huge quantities of solid waste are generated as result of mining activities in Trepça, Kosova. Trepça has a long history in mining activities since 1939. The majority of these wastes have been deposited in open tailing damps, which due to poor management possess a significant long-term environmental threat. However most of these wastes contain valuable and recoverable metals that are favorable for potential reuse. Waste utilization represents potentially useful resources of material for variety applications such as landfill, road constructions, aggregate in concrete and asphalt, brick, recovery of metals and other materials.This paper describes the characterization of each waste material in Trepça tailing damps in Mitrovica, Kosova. The paper also discusses the different ways in which each type of waste can be utilized in Kosova. Examples of commercial utilization are presented. Keywords: mining waste, tailing, utilization, waste characterization. 1. INTRODUCTION In the frame of sustainable development and waste management, the process of waste utilization, metal recovery and economic outputs is interested to be analysed. The study aims to bring a series of contribution in very complex field of mining waste utilization and metal recovery from waste. Solid waste has been identified as a major problem that has reached proportions requiring radical measures. A lead-zinc ore deposit in Trepça, Kosova, was mined and abandoned almost 80 years ego. Trepça was the largest metallurgic and mining complex in Europe with a long history in silver, lead and zinc metallurgy. Because of the inefficiency of the past mineral processing technologies nearly 1,500,000 tons of waste materials sorted in Mitrovica Industrial Park, which contain considerable amounts of zinc and other metal such as lead, cadmium, ferrous, nickel, cooper, and other precious metals remain. The main portion of deposited waste is generated from processing of sulphide ore concentrates. The deposited waste in tailing dams was associated with a lot of environmental problems. Due to the combination of improved processing technologies and higher prices for base metals we think that favourable circumstances are created for this proposal to reprocess the metal-rich tailings in the already existing reprocessing facility at Trepça with a double benefit in both cleaning up an environmental problem and making an economic gain. The reuse of mining and mineral-processing wastes may minimize the environmental impacts related to waste disposal. In view of the above there has been an increasing interest in developing processes for the separation of zinc and other metals from the deposited wastes. The best way to treat and separate these metals can be the utilisation of the several hydrometallurgical and thermo chemical treatment technologies, the traditional and modern ones, since they are economical and environmentally suitable to recover valuable metal elements. In these concern two types of waste generated from lead and zinc metallurgy of Trepca in Kosovo will be analysed. 1 Corresponding author: University of Zagreb, Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Croatia, mihone_k@hotmail.com 2 Agricultural University of Tirana, Faculty of Environment and Agriculture, Albania, PhD candidate, afete.shala@hotmail.com 3 Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning, Republic of Kosova, vlajqi@hotmail.com