Islands buckling under increased waste burden
Every year, millions of tourists visit the islands of the Cyclades and the Dodecanese, leaving, albeit for a few months, a heavy environmental footprint.
To cope with the inevitably dramatic rise in waste which the small islands have to handle with limited means, space and resources, it is simply buried or baled.
Indicatively, this is the case with more than 90% of the waste produced – around 285,000 tons per year.
The pitfalls of this method were highlighted on Wednesday when the baled garbage on Andros and Milos caught fire, covering the islands in toxic smoke.
The problem has plagued the islands for years with seemingly no end in sight.
Typically not a single one of the waste management units foreseen in the previous regional plan of 2016 have been put in place, recycling remains in its infancy, and composting is nonexistent.
For most islands there is not even a record of actual waste volumes, so that the 2030 plan is based on estimates that may be significantly different from reality. Thus, the ambitious targets set in EU legislation seem for most islands to be a nightmare.
The impasses of the current situation are outlined in the new regional waste management plan, which is currently in the process of being adopted.
As it states, the region of the South Aegean has serious deficiencies in urban waste management infrastructure, meaning landfills that simply cannot cope with large amounts of waste. Moreover, eight islands are still burying waste in illegal landfills – Ios, Santorini, Milos, Kalymnos, Symi, Mykonos, Tinos and Folegandros – for which Greece gets fined.
Four islands that do not have a landfill (Andros, Tinos, Milos and Leros) are baling waste as a “transitional” solution until the infrastructure is built.
