Turkey spent a total of 31.8 billion Turkish lira ($10.6 billion) on the environment in 2016, Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) announced Monday.

Of that amount, 71.6 percent of environmental expenditures were realized by the public sector and 23.9 percent by the business sector. The share of total environmental expenditures in the gross domestic product was calculated at 1.2 percent.

Turkey's total environmental taxation was determined as TL 88.7 billion ($29.6 billion), with 65.3 percent in energy taxes, 33.5 percent in transportation taxes and 1.2 percent in source and pollution taxes.

TurkStat also announced its greenhouse gas emission inventory results, calculating carbon dioxide emissions as 496.1 million tons in 2016.

Energy-related emissions made up the largest share with 72.8 percent, followed by industrial operations and product use by 12.6 percent, agricultural activities by 11.4 percent and waste by 3.3 percent.

Carbon dioxide emissions per capita for 2016 were 6.3 tons per person.

Turkey's municipalities collected 31.6 million tons of waste in 2016, 9.8 percent of which was sent to recycling facilities. A total of 1,558 recycling facilities recovered 33 million tons of waste to be recycled.

A total of 17.3 billion cubic meters of water were withdrawn from water resources in 2016, TurkStat also said.

The report specified that 33.7 percent of this water was used by municipalities, 49.7 percent by thermal power plants, 12.2 percent by manufacturing industry establishments, 2.2 percent by villages, 0.9 by organized industrial zones (OIZ) and 1.3 percent by mining enterprises.

Of the water withdrawn, 58.2 percent was from the sea, 16.1 percent from dams, 13 percent from wells, 7.9 from springs and 4.8 percent from other sources.

Turkey has boosted environmental efforts in recent years, launching "Let's Build A Greener Turkey Together" campaign in March and encouraging citizens and businesses to recycle and use recycled materials. Turkey managed to recycle more than half of the plastic bottles in the market in 2017, according to the Ministry of Environment and Urban Planning.

The country is also increasingly investing in renewable energy sources, particularly solar and wind power.