Noll, Dominik, Dominik Wiedenhofer, Alessio Miatto, Simron Jit Singh. 2018. Infrastructure expansion, waste generation and EU policies on Circular Economy in Samothraki, Greece: An island's dilemma. Science to support circular economy symposium of the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Anthropogenic Resources, Vienna.
Abstract:
For the Greek island Samothraki, an effective waste management strategy plays a central role, as the export of waste is cost intensive and local disposal possibilities are limited. The EU Waste Framework Directive (EU-WFD) 2008/98/EC demands from EU member states a 70% recycling and recovery rate of construction and demolition waste (CDW) until 2020, which was reinforced with the Circular Economy Package. The construction of a new port in the late 1960s lead to an expansion of the built environment, unprecedented on the island and driven by the integration of Greece into the EU, labor migration and a shift in the local economy, especially through the advent of tourism. As a consequence, new types and expanding quantities of CDW put the island community increasingly in the need for action.
In this study, a dynamic stock-driven modelling approach in combination with a qualitative survey was applied in order to assess material flows associated with the dynamics of different infrastructure and building types from 1971 to 2016. Our results show that the material stock expanded from 175 t/cap to 350 t/cap in the given period, leading to a 15-fold increase of annual CDW generation. With a recycling rate of only 14% from in-situ recycling of road pavements, the island is currently far away from meeting the recycling and recovery targets of the EU-WFD. For future waste management strategies, the island community requires an integrated assessment of CDW avoidance, recycling and recovery potentials. This study marks a first step in this direction.