Third International Conference on Tourism & Leisure Studies

Abstract

Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) generation has become a source of unsustainable development in touristic destinations, especially in islands such as the Canary Island archipelago. Indeed, islands usually enjoy a vulnerable biodiversity but they stand isolated from mainland recycling networks and facilities, facing an insufficient industrial scale and costly reverse logistics. Interestingly, tourism remains invisible for waste management in the region even though it is a crucial industry to be considered by any waste policy. In this paper, we model MSW generation in the island of Tenerife in order to identify socio-demographic, economic and disposal related variables and to quantify their impact using a municipal panel data from 2004 to 2015. We implement a novel approach to measure the impact of tourism sector on MSW generation by considering the level of employment of its characteristic activities (NACE 55 and 56) instead of the usual number of overnights or of tourists like studies found in the literature. In addition, we isolate tourist consumption in these activities from consumption related to residents. Results help to identify the direct net effect of characteristic tourism activities on the generation of MSW. Our contribution visualizes tourism impacts in waste generation in the island which may improve the financial mechanisms of waste management services – likely correcting cross-subsidies both among generators and municipalities. This step seems fundamental for an efficient MSW management and planning in touristic destinations.