Municipal solid waste management in island communities: existing experience and implementation possibilities for South Aegean Islands

Solid waste management in island communities is triggered by the limitation in the availability of resources, which in combination to the small amounts of wastes produced, renders the selection and sizing of the appropriate methods and infrastructures very challenging. Certain complexity to the decision-making adds also the lack of advanced infrastructures which in most islands are only limited to sanitary landfills and the time-varying MSW production load following the related touristic infusion. The current national policy foresees the creation of local facilities with emphasis in the recovery and recycling of materials, but still the technology selection and the model of MSW locally applied needs further exploration. In view of that, the aim of this paper is firstly to review the technologies and models used in MSW management in isolated island areas around the world and secondly to acknowledge any possible technology and know-how transfer that could be used in the case of Greek island regions. The paper concludes with a community-based solution suggestion: a set of MSW facilities for a group of islands, allowing to operate on a synergetic and economically viable basis, even during the winter period that the waste faction is very limited.