Material Flow Analysis (MFA) for Waste Management in Olive Oil Industries sector in South Europe

Abstract:

The olive oil waste management was always one of the biggest problems in agricultural and environmental sector. Besides, everyone can observe that the olive oil industries produce every year more that 10 million tons of waste including wastewaters and solid waste (leaves, dry pomace). It is given attention to the challenges which exist for waste treatment (there are different cases) and of course following the different legal frameworks at European and National level.

Cause of the increase of the amount of olive oil mills waste every year, it's necessary to increase the awareness of the olive oil mills stakeholders encouraging them in sustainable olive mill waste (OMW) management, always with cooperation of the public services and research centers for positive solutions. The OMW management is becoming a critical issue for the sustainability of olive oil industry, because of the increasing quantities generated, the public environmental awareness and stricter environmental laws. This paper provides a view of perspectives for waste management in olive oil sector for the main oil producing countries, Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal using the material flow analysis (MFA) approach as a tool.