Greece’s Tilos Wins Top European Prize for Sustainability

The land of Tilos successful Greece has already managed to recycle 93 percent of its waste. Credit: Facebook / Ministry of Environment and Energy

Greece’s land of Tilos has go a awesome of sustainability for the full of Europe, winning the archetypal prize successful the “Supporting Sustainable Transition” class astatine the 2024 European Entrepreneurship Promotion Awards (EEPA) earlier this week.

Tilos besides won the apical Grand Jury Award which recognizes the astir originative and inspiring inaugural promoting entrepreneurship successful Europe.

Presenting the Award, EEPA described Tilos arsenic a “beacon of sustainability” and a notation constituent for Europe and added that the tiny island’s commendable efforts person go a root of inspiration for countries and communities seeking solutions for a sustainable future.

The EEPA recognizes and rewards exceptional initiatives supporting entrepreneurship astatine the national, determination and section levels. With a grounds fig of 442 entries from 29 countries this year, Germany, Turkey, Denmark, Serbia, Estonia, Greece, and France emerged arsenic the winning countries crossed the assorted categories. Each presented unsocial projects that inspire, foster and facilitate concern maturation and innovation wrong their respective fields.

Tilos won the rubric owed to the ongoing task “Just Go Zero Tilos.” The inaugural implemented a technologically precocious strategy for waste management connected the island, supported by assemblage consultation and consciousness raising, to promote a circular economy.

Having successfully diverted 100 percent of discarded from landfills and boosting the recycling complaint to 93 percent, the task offers a replicable exemplary for sustainable discarded absorption for different communities.

The engagement with the island’s residents and the concern community, alongside usage of low-carbon technology, was highly commended by the jury.

Sustainability triumph of Tilos “belongs to each of Greece”

Receiving the award, Mayor Maria Kamma highlighted that “this triumph does not beryllium lone to Tilos. It belongs to each Greeks who judge that we tin alteration the world. It is impervious that adjacent the smallest land tin permission its people connected history.”

In words afloat of emotion, she praised the existent heroes, the inhabitants of Tilos, who believed and worked to crook the imaginativeness into reality.

“This grant is simply a telephone for each of Greece to clasp sustainability. Our travel does not extremity here—it has conscionable begun,” she added.

When “Just Go Zero” was initiated, residents of the sparsely populated land received bags and containers to abstracted their trash into recyclables, biowaste, and non-recyclables.

Trucks cod trash from homes 3 oregon 4 times a week, and the installation separates it into 25 streams. The top percent is recycled oregon reused portion a minuscule magnitude is processed for vigor use.

As Mayor Kamma noted, “We proved that innovation does not commencement from the center, but from our tiny islands, which tin service arsenic examples,” and she referred to the precocious mayor, Tassos Aliferis, who “convinced the section assemblage we could basal connected our ain 2 feet.”

Tilos is besides Greece’s archetypal energy-self-sufficient island

Tilos, lying betwixt Nisyros successful the northbound and Rhodes successful the south, agelong a tract of pioneering programs, also covers astir 100 percent of its vigor needs done renewable vigor sources.

With a colonisation of conscionable implicit 500 radical and the summation of 13,000 tourists a year, Tilos was the archetypal retired of 80 full projects chosen to person backing nether an EU programme called “Horizon 2020.”

The main extremity of the Tilos task was the instauration of Greece’s first hybrid powerfulness station, which produces vigor from its precise ain upwind workplace and solar powerfulness generators that it aboriginal stores successful batteries.

With the task present completed, Tilos tin boast of becoming wholly self-sufficient successful energy.

“I americium precise arrogant of what we person achieved,” Maria Kamma-Aliferi told Greek Reporter recently.

“Our occurrence is simply a acquisition for each land communities successful Greece,” she commented happily.