engleski

Challenges of waste management in isolated coastal environments: the case study of Pašman island, Croatia

Speaking of the sea ecosystem and its waste pollution completely coincides with the research questions of the environmental geography. Pašman island with an area of the 60.11 km2 is located in the central part of the Adriatic Sea. It is placed in Zadar County and divided in two municipalities Pašman and Tkon. According to Census 2011 there were 2845 islanders living in eight settlements. One of the main economic activities on island is tourism which has big impact on local infrastructure and environment. In 2019 there were recorded 31.192 tourist arrivals and 273.542 overnight stays on island, mostly during summer season. The systematic field survey focussed on the two research environments, the Pašman coastal zone and the inland, has been conducted in 2018. Therefore we collected data on similar indicators for the both areas, previously prepared for the Kornati archipelago to enable the later comparison. The present work discusses the island, randomly selected, originally to check and compare the solid waste disposal characteristics 1) at the coastal areas and 2) on the interior land. We found out 0, 37 waste locations/km2 of island surface and surveyed 10 waste locations in the coastal area. The indicators included a) physical geographical conditions and b) sociogeographical features of the solid waste locations, including the origin of the waste referring the country of the production. The final survey outcomes are purposed to help as recommendations for the further (sustainable) waste management plan at the island. Communal waste is disposed into recycling bins and then collected and transported to the mainland, but with the further tourism development there must be taken into consideration the possibility of more sustainable waste management. In spite of the human pressures (activities) the island still offers pure natural landscape with the high environmental aesthetics, worth to be protected and preserved.

field mapping, environmental geography, waste management, sea waste, Pašman island

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