351 Agricultural Plastic Waste Mapping in Greece M. Hiskakis, D. Briassoulis, E. Babou and K. Liantzas Agricultural University of Athens Department of Agricultural Engineering, Iera Odos 75 11855, Athens Greece Keywords: Agriculture, products, consumption, collection, management Abstract A detailed geographical mapping of the agricultural plastic use in Greece was conducted in the framework of a European project 1 focusing in the areas of high concentration. Quantitative data and analysis of the agricultural plastic waste generation by category (films, bags etc), the geographical distribution, the compositional range and physical characteristics of the agricultural plastic waste per use, the temporal distribution of removal, the current agricultural plastic waste management practices and disposal methods available are presented. Reported information on the agricultural plastic use in Greece is sporadic and unreliable. Data from the Ministry of Agriculture and the Statistical Organization of Greece were combined with information from the services of the prefectures, local agronomists and farmers, site visits and interviews with the sales departments of major producers and importers of agricultural plastics. The temporal distribution of the agricultural plastic waste generation within each zone is important for the logistics of the consolidation operation. The composition and physical characteristics of the agricultural plastic waste streams were mapped by category and by application. These characteristics may delimit some of the disposal options of the streams (i.e. recycling, energy recovery) and guide the consolidation methodology. This work represents the first systematic effort to completely map the agricultural plastic waste generation and consolidation in Greece. The structured information and the reliable data provided in this work are expected to stimulate the design of an optimized waste management system for the agricultural plastic wastes chain in Greece. It is also expected that this work will facilitate the implementation of the labelling scheme to be developed in the framework of the European project Labelagriwaste 1 . INTRODUCTION AND SCOPE Plastics are extensively used in agriculture in Greece and the main applications are as films in protected cultivations (greenhouse, low tunnel, mulching films), shading covers, nets, irrigation and drainage and packaging (fertilizer bags, agrochemical containers etc). Legal and environmental reasons forbid the open pit burning or burying the plastic in the soil. A sustainable waste management scheme has to be devised. In such a scheme the agricultural plastics, upon the end of their useful life, have to be removed from the field, sorted, separated and consolidated in a designated area and then be sent (traded) for final disposal (recycling or energy recovery). To design a good waste management scheme one should have a very detailed picture of the composition of the plastics, the quantity of the waste generated, the time of the year the waste is generated (e.g. month of removal of low tunnel film) and of the geographical location were the waste is generated (proximity of roads etc). Such structured information will allow detailed planning of the management of the agricultural plastic waste (APW), a goal that, starts from the areas where most of the agricultural plastic waste is located. In order to determine these areas a 1 Acknowledgement: The present work has been supported by the European ‘Labelling agricultural plastic waste for valorising the waste stream’, Collective research, LABELAGRIWASTE, Contract no. 516256-2. Proc. IS on Greensys2007 Eds.:S. De Pascale et al. Acta Hort. 801, ISHS 2008