Tourism is extremely important for local economy, however,
it also contributes to escalating amounts of wastes. In our earlier
work (Tomperi et al., 2014a,b), we concentrated on the development
of a sustainable waste management concept for tourist
areas in Lapland. Especially bio-waste generated by the tourism
industry was in our focus. The need for sustainable bio-waste management
solutions was established by an earlier survey performed
by the “Keep Lapland Tidy” association in the tourism industry
(Pidä Lappi Siistinä ry, 2010). The survey established that, especially
accommodation and nutritional operations; hotels, restaurants and
grocery stores produce significant amounts of bio-waste (20–30%
of all the municipal solid waste generated) and consider bio-waste management as one of the problem areas. Most enterprises sort
their wastes, especially recyclables and make efforts of food waste
reduction. However,they are interested in further enhancing waste
sorting and in a more sustainable bio-waste management solution.
In order to respond to this research need, we choose to assess
the potential of small-scale, decentralized bio-refinery solutions for
sustainable bio-waste management in Lapland. Our first case study
area was the Kolari municipality. The reason for selecting Kolari
was the existence of a bio-waste collection scheme; bio-waste is
being collected separately from tourist centers during the tourist
season (Lapin ELY, 2012). The municipality also had data available
on collected bio-waste amounts.