Waste management in touristic regions

Tourism is one of the most important industries worldwide and a driver for socioeconomic development in many regions, particularly developing countries with unique cultural, historic and natural resources. According to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), international tourism revenues reached a record of US$1245 billion in 2014. Moreover, an additional US$221 billion was generated from international passenger transport, bringing total exports from international tourism up to US$1500 billion. However, tourism has been recognised as a high energy and water resources demanding activity, simultaneously generating significant amounts of solid wastes from lodgings and recreational areas. On the global scale, this situation has been already highlighted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). In fact, during 2011 UNEP estimated a worldwide solid waste generation of 4.8million t just from international tourism, representing about 14% of the total municipal solid wastes generated during this year. UNEP has estimated that European tourists generate about 1 kg person-1 day-1 of solid wastes (when touring in Europe), while tourists from USA generate up to 2 kg person-1 day-1 (when touring in USA). Some scientific articles already published in the literature highlight that there is a broad range of solid waste generation in touristic locations, varying between 1 and 12 kg guest-1 day-1. This high variation depends on several factors, such as type and occupation rate of touristic installations, tourist attributes, season of the year and environmental legislation of the country. Because of the aforementioned facts, solid waste generation is nowadays considered as one of the most relevant environmental aspects from touristic activities, especially owing to the fact that many of the establishments that make up this sector, such as hotels, bars and restaurants, use large quantities of expendable single-use consumer goods as part of their operations. In addition, tourists are not always aware of how waste management in a specific region is supposed to function. As tourists are there for just a short period of time, it is unlikely that they will adapt to a specific need of the solid waste management system. This seems to be the reason why solid waste management systems in touristic regions have their own rules. Moreover, this reality is even harder when tourism is concentrated in one season only, like winter or summer, putting even more stress into waste management systems as the generated solid wastes mass and volume flow is totally season dependent. This hypothesis takes even more relevance when comparing the broad range of solid waste generation rates in touristic activities with municipal solid waste generation. In fact, and as an example, municipal solid waste generation rates reach 0.88 kg inhab-1 day-1 in Czech Republic, 1.04 kg inhab-1 day-1 in Chile, 1.45 kg inhab-1 day-1 in France, 1.53 kg inhab-1 day-1 in Austria, 1.64 kg inhab-1 day-1 in Germany, 1.75 kg inhab-1 day-1 in Australia and 2.0 kg inhab-1 day-1 in the USA. Without a doubt, solid waste generation rates in touristic regions can be significantly higher compared with municipal solid waste generation, a situation that can lead to serious environmental impacts, particularly in the case of low density population touristic regions without sufficient infrastructure in place to deal with wastes generated by the relatively small indigenous population. Besides, in several zones of high touristic interest, visitor amounts can even overcome the volume of wastes generated by the local population during the ‘high season’. One of the most relevant problems associated to solid waste generation in touristic regions is the fact that those regions may present inefficient solid waste management programmes, rudimentary or no environmental protection legislation and poor infrastructure, provoking significant environmental impacts mostly owing to uncontrolled or sub-standard solid waste disposal. Those environmental impacts may include surface water and groundwater contamination owing to leachate generation at dumps and percolation, emissions of air pollutants and associated odours, sanitary problems owing to the harbourage of disease carrying vectors, soil contamination and biodiversity loss. In addition and according to Velis (Waste Management & Research 32: 251–253), plastic wastes in marine litter has emerged as one of the most difficult-to-resolve global waste and resource management challenges. Particularly in the case of developing countries, plastic is the highest component of tourist waste on beaches, staying on the beach and in the sea for a long time. Owing to this reason, inefficient solid waste management operations can produce contrary effects in these touristic regions, namely higher operational costs and blight owing to litter and contaminated water, reducing the touristic value of the otherwise attractive location. Therefore, high standard solid waste management programmes have become a must in touristic regions, which can also generate positive opportunities for the local community including higher competitiveness, new employment opportunities and even incrementing the touristic attractiveness by reducing environmental impacts, as noted above. Regarding touristic regions, urban and rural areas must be distinguished. In urban touristic regions, such as cities and beaches for example, selective collection systems focused on recovering value from the waste stream via recycling may be the right approach. There are many mature examples of recycling programmes in urban areas that could be practical and economically feasible in tourist areas with perhaps only minor Waste management in touristic regions 594982WMR0010.1177/0734242X15594982Waste Management & ResearchEditorial research-article2015