In October 2018, the European Commission sought to bring an action against Spain in the European Court of Justice for failing to fulfill its obligations with the Community directives on waste management. As post-pandemic tourism begins to rebound, the question remains what happens to waste in Andalucía? Markku Björkman, a frequent visitor to the region, provides this insight.
In Case C-642/18, the European Commission (EC) contended that by failing to revise the waste management plans provided for in Directive 2008/98/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of November 19, 2008, on waste and repealing certain Directives (OJ 2008 L 312, p. 3) concerning the Autonomous Communities of the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands and by failing to inform the Commission officially of the revision of those plans, Spain failed to fulfill the waste management directive.
The Commission argued that the notification was justified partly because it had not officially received any national plan for the management of household waste and partly by the severe shortcomings of the program for hazardous waste by the competent Spanish body.
According to the Commission, the plan was very vague regarding treatment facilities and specific provisions for certain types of waste.
However, in December 2019, the Court ruled that the action was inadmissible as the Commission had given notice to Spain in November 2016 almost a month prior to the deadline for the Member States to fulfill their obligations under Article 30(1) of Directive 2008/98 which expired only six years after the expiry of the deadline for transposition of said Directive, that is December 12, 2016.
Costa del Sol, a tourism magnet
Be that as it may, what does the” waste plan” situation look like today in Andalucía, a region that is part of Spain’s Costa del Sol, one of Europe’s top sunshine holiday destinations?
Over 200 million tourists visit the countries around the Mediterranean every year. Plastic waste, in particular single-use plastics (SUP) and microplastics, both on land and in the Mediterranean Sea are a major issue.
European countries produce 27 million tonnes of plastic annually, and only a third are recycled or recovered for energy. Most of the plastic that ends up in the Mediterranean is said to originate from Turkey and Spain.
More investments in recycling and waste management are required to stem the flow of plastic waste into waterways.
The individual tourist can also pull a (biodegradable) straw to the stack by, for example, avoiding disposable plates and disposable mugs or by buying drinking water in ten-litre water bottles instead of smaller bottles.
Seasonality a challenge
Approximately 2.3 percent of Mediterranean tourists or 4.6 million visited the province and coastal city of Málaga in 2019. Málaga is the second-largest city in Andalusía (pop. c. 600 000) and, together with Gothenburg in Sweden, was designated European Capital of Smart Tourism 2020.
In 2019, for the first time in history, Málaga Airport reported over two million passengers.
One challenge is seasonality as it is during the summer that the number of people on the Costa del Sol triples. However, official figures on where people are registered do not always correspond to reality.
Therefore, waste collection statistics are a good indicator of the number of visitors and inhabitants. Other indicators are water supply, electricity consumption, traffic, and also, to some extent, hospital care.
Figures from waste management and water consumption show that 2.7 million people visited the province of Málaga during the summer of 2019 before the beginning of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
For instance, in Marbella, waste management increases significantly in August when the number of inhabitants, which usually is 140 000, sometimes reaches over 500 000. The cleaning force increased by 80 people during that time.
In Axarquía, east of Málaga, the increase is 33 percent. Rincón de la Victoria, Torre del mar, Torrox and Nerja report increases of 67 percent.
On the western Costa del Sol, water consumption triples during the summer. According to information produced by the daily newspaper Diario SUR from Acosol, the public water company in the western Costa del Sol, the annual consumption is 34.7 cubic hectometers (34.7 billion litres).
Thirty-eight percent of that figure is consumed between July and September. Despite drought and lack of rain, there is water for households. The water reservoir La Concepción behind Marbella was filled to 72 percent (44 hm3) in early September 2020. One-third comes from a desalination plant, while water is also transferred from the Spanish side of Gibraltar since an agreement in 2013.
We have done our homework, so we have enough to guarantee water supply to the population, said Manuel Cardeña at Acosol.
Electricity consumption is another interesting indicator. In Málaga alone, electricity consumption increases by 27 percent during the summer, with a peak during the holidays.
Anyone who has visited the Cortijo de Torres holiday area during this time is no doubt impressed by all the lighting. The traffic on the coastal road A-7 increases significantly during the summer months.
On average, over 41 000 cars per day circulate along with the A-7 on the western Costa del Sol, compared with 24 000 during the low season. A regular ten-minute drive between San Pedro and Marbella takes 30 minutes.
Waste treatment
Municipal waste management in Málaga is conducted by LIMASA, a public-private company that provides public cleaning services, collection, transportation, treatment, and disposal of municipal solid waste (MSW) from the city.
LIMASA operates the Centro Ambiental de Málaga “Los Ruices”, a 320 hectare (ha) integrated recycling, waste treatment, and landfill site where all of Málaga’s MSW, which includes food waste, is processed.
The main facilities at Los Ruices are a combined recycling and composting plant, a sorting centre for packaging waste, and a landfill for non-hazardous waste.
On an annual basis, the site processes around 350 000 tonnes and recovers around 3.5 million Nm3 of landfill gas (LFG), 85 percent of which is used to supply power to the grid with the heat and remaining electricity used by the plant.
Oranges become organic waste
During the springtime, municipal workers in Andalucía are in full swing pruning work and taking down fruit from orange trees that line many streets in the towns in southern Spain.
Pruning is a horticultural and silvicultural practice involving the selective removal of certain parts of a plant, such as branches, buds, or roots. Up until the early 2000s, thousands of oranges were picked from the tree-lined street
and sent to a company in Seville. The fruit became animal feed, essential oils for fragrances, or bitter orange marmalade exported to the UK and French markets.
Nowadays, everything ends up at the Los Ruices waste management facility as per the Health Care Board’s instructions. The Board advises against consuming fruit grown in an urban environment as it may contain elevated levels of various pollutant contaminants originating from traffic on busy streets.
According to Luis Medina-Montoya, member of the Environmental Committee for Málaga municipality, over 580 000 kilos (580 tonnes) of oranges from 6 876 trees will be picked and discarded during this year’s pruning campaign in Málaga.
The harvest will become organic waste destined for Los Ruices, where it is transformed into a low-quality compost as citrus fruits themselves contain substances that are not so suitable for the environment.
Is Costa del Sol saturated?
As travel restrictions begin to let up and sunshine tourists begin finding their way back to Spain and Costa del Sol, the question remains if the region has the infrastructure needed to accommodate the anticipated surge in demand.
Experts say that there is room, the coast is not yet saturated, and that Costa del Sol has the infrastructure to meet demand as the 2019 season proved. But they also caution that the number of inhabitants and tourists may become so high that there is no question of sustainable development.
What kind of waste management will be needed is an issue that hardly anybody seems to be thinking of at this very pandemic moment.
