Waste management strategies and practices have to be adapted to the local constraints. Island and remote areas face particular challenges due to the difficulties associated to its collection, the lack of infrastructure or lack of accessibility to treatment units. These constraints make it difficult to transpose good practices traditionally used in urban areas, and to achieve economies of scale for the treatment of their waste. Islands also have to deal with various impacts linked to tourism: important seasonal variations necessity to adapt the collection infrastructure to tourists with very diverse backgrounds and environmental behaviours.
The second public conference of the COLLECTORS project was hosted by Wasteserv Malta – the company in charge of waste management on the island. It was introduced by Hon Herrera, Maltese Minister for the Environment who detailed Malta’s new waste strategy and the generalisation of selective collection of organic waste on the island. The conference focused on these issues through discussions and sharing of experiences by different European public authorities, along with other presentations on how to improve municipal waste recycling performances.
Presentations
- Presentation of waste management in Malta | Ruth DeBrincat Tabone, Ministry for the Environment, Sustainable Development and Climate Change
- The COLLECTORS project | Tjerk Wardenaar, PNO consultants
- Experts’ points of view
- Practical trials on WEEE collection: experiences and recommendations to increase efficiency and effectivity | Sven Grieger, European Advanced Recycling Network
- Waste4Think H2020 project: 80% recycling with PAYT and social actions in Seveso | Michele Giavini, A.R.S. ambiente
- Round table 1: Waste management on islands and remote areas – challenges, solutions?
After a presentation of the BlueIslands project (addressing the effects of the seasonal variation of waste generation on Mediterranean islands as an effect of tourism), representatives of public authorities shared their experiences regarding waste management on islands and remote areas.- The InterregMed BLUEISLANDS project | Louiselle Sciberras, Waste Serv Malta
- Balearic islands (Spain) | Sebastià Sansó i Jaume, Environmental Education, Environmental Quality and Waste Management of the Balearic Islands Government
- Region of Epirus (Greece) | Ioannis Papagiannis, Epirus Region authority Dep. of Technical Services
- Round table 2: re-shaping waste management systems to boost performances
Several models of waste management systems were presented and discussed by the public authorities implementing them.
- Zagreb (Croatia) | Bojan Ribić, Zagreb Holding – Čistoća
- Warsaw (Poland) | Agnieszka Radziłowska, City of Warsaw – Municipal Waste Management Department
- Stavanger (Norway) | Tor Larsen, Municipality of Stavanger – Dep. of Waste Management
- Vilnius (Lithuania) | Marius Banaitis, JSC „VAATC“