Waste management: new policies for EU port cities

ABSTRACT

The article aims to draw attention to the emergent issue of waste management by highlighting the importance of having new sustainable policies for port cities. The European Union considers two distinct levels of waste management: one relating to port areas and the other specific to the urban context. However, in port cities, the port and the city interact in many ways, and one is essential for the other. The authors stress the importance of developing a single sustainable waste management plan that considers at the same time the city and its port. This is because port waste has negative effects on coastal communities and vice versa, urban waste is contaminating the oceans. After careful study of the European legislation on waste management in urban and port areas, the authors defined how to implement a Sustainable Waste Management Plan for port cities. Case study is the port city of Savona.

KEYWORDS:

• Waste management
• port cities
• spatial planning

Acknowledgments

We wish to acknowledge the help provided by the Association ‘Assonautica Savona’ which donated its pilot project on sustainable waste management (Figure 1) and all PORT-5R partners.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).