0572 – Reducing the Consumption and Disposal of Single-use Plastics in the Tourism Industry in Cyprus, Greece and Malta

Name of the lead partner organisation: Aspon Consulting Ltd 

Country of the lead partner organisation: Cyprus

Project summary: 

The project titled “Reducing the Consumption and Disposal of Single-use Plastics in the Tourism Industry in Cyprus, Greece and Malta”, also known as “SUPMed”, was launched in July 2020. The project runs until June 2023, with a total budget of €1,279,405.00. The project is a transnational cooperation between consultancies in each region and the six partners participating in the project are Aspon Consulting Ltd as the Lead Partner (CY), Heraklion Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GR), Anelixis Development Consultants S.A. (GR), Cellock Ltd (CY), AIS Environment (MT) and the Cyprus Hotel Association (CY). The project focus on these 3 areas because they are all islands in the Mediterranean Sea with high accumulations of plastic waste, are big producers of waste with low recycling rates and their economies are heavily dependent on tourism.

Through this project, the project consortium aims to implement a common solution to the EU shared and urgent challenge of single-use plastics (SUP), to help the tourism sector in the three regions and in Europe in general, reduce the consumption, disposal and impact of SUP in line with EU Directive 2019/904.

Specifically, the partners will proceed with selecting a sample of at least three tourist establishments per region. Then, the partners will support those samples of coastal tourist establishments in Cyprus, Malta and Greece (Crete) via pilots to move to sustainable resource-efficient business models that will identify and replace commonly used SUP with environmentally friendlier, readily available and affordable alternatives. The pilot samples will be supported in phasing out and replacing SUP via a bespoke free web-based decision-support tool (DST) that will be developed. The DST will present viable and available alternatives to the most commonly used SUP, taking into consideration the cost and environmental impacts of each alternative across its life-cycle. 

Following the completion of the pilot in each of the three regions, best practise guides will be developed that will present the findings of the pilots, the impacts of plastic waste on human health and the environment, how to reduce SUP in the tourism and other sectors and what envirionmentally friendlier and affordable alternatives are available. These guides will be disseminated to SMEs, NGOs, tourist establishments and other relevant stakeholders in the three regions and across Europe, as an additional support tool in replacing SUPs. The DST will continue to be free to use post the project duration to further add transnational value and to scale up the project results, support SMEs and NGOs in all sectors across the EU to replicate the pilots, extending the project sustainability and positive change beyond the end of the funding period.

The pilots focus on samples of tourist establishments on the three islands, which are the direct target group, along with all SMEs and NGOs in the tourism and other sectors in the EU, while the general public and the environment that is negatively affected by SUP are the end beneficiaries.