1. Introduction
By definition, according to WHO (World Health Organization), a pandemic is considered as “an epidemic occurring worldwide, or over a very wide area, crossing international boundaries and usually affecting a large number of people”. The conventional pandemic classification does not cover or relate to population immunity, virology, or disease severity. Therefore, with this definition, seasonal epidemics are not considered pandemics, but pandemics can be considered to occur annually in each of the temperate southern and northern hemispheres, as seasonal epidemics cross international borders and affect a large number of people [
1].
During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) period, as announced [
2], almost the entire planet was locked down (either from fear or to prevent the worst health effects). At the same time, the major fundamentals of human rights and human activities (such as free movement), the structures of the entire world health system, and the structures of the economies worldwide have been tested without any successful result. During May 2020 [
3], the total number of confirmed positive cases of COVID-19 was almost 3.4 million [
4]. According to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control [
5], there were 15.7 million cases of COVID-19 on the 25th of July 2020 (in agreement with the applied case definitions and testing strategies in the affected countries), and the reported deaths were equal to 4.07% (equal with 639,273). At the same time, according to WHO [
1], the deaths from pollution were estimated to be more than 12 million inhabitants per year. Every year, 1.5 million people die from inhaling indoor pollutants that often exceed accepted guideline limits for outdoor air. In the case of fine particles, the limit is exceeded by 100 times or more. Children and women are disproportionately affected, with nearly 800,000 deaths attributable to indoor air pollution occurring among children under five years of age and more than 500,000 such deaths occurring among women. And for these reasons, there is a huge debate whether or not COVID-19 is a pandemic. However, according to Ilyas et al. [
6], the pandemic started in China (Hubei and Wuhan) in December 2019, and at the beginning was known as new pneumonia diseases. Deeper investigation indicated a novel coronavirus, which was named 2019 novel coronavirus (SARS-Cov-2), that caused clusters of fatal pneumonia with clinical presentation greatly resembling SARSCoV according to Huang et al. [
7] and Wang et al. [
8].
Zambrano-Monserrate et al. [
9] mentioned that COVID-19 generates several indirect and direct effects on the environment. It is true, that to the best of our knowledge the direct and long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on solid waste management systems’ climate changes, waste production, coastal environment, and, furthermore, on the waste accumulation and clean coast index are still not well known [
10]. However, as the planet was entirely in lockdown, the greenhouse gases (GHGs) were reduced (along with CO
2 emissions) due to the fact that there were strict measures on movement globally (almost zero cars on the roads—much fewer accident—and only the most necessary flights were made). Le Quéré et al. [
10] mentioned that before the COVID-19 pandemic, the emissions of CO
2 were increasing by about 1% on a yearly basis [
11,
12,
13], while there was limited progress in 2019 [
13]. Considering that COVID-19 was first acknowledged in December 2019 [
1] and confirmed as a global pandemic by the WHO on 11 March 2020, Le Quéré et al. [
10] indicated that the day-to-day global CO
2 releases decreased by −17 (−11 to −25) MtCO
2/d, or −17% (−11 to −25%) by April 2020, taking into account the emissions realized on 2019. Janssens-Maenhout et al. [
14] provided evidence that CO
2 minimization within the COVID-19 pandemic period had a large variation, which was similar to the seasonal CO
2 production. Globally, according to Le Quéré et al. [
10], CO
2 emissions from the transportation sector reduced by −36% (equal to −7.5 MtCO
2/d), −7.4% (equal to −3.3 MtCO
2/d) from the power sector, and the manufacturing division, the reduction was −19% (equal to −4.3 MtCO
2/d), on 7 April 2020. Furthermore, until the end of April 2020, the minimization of CO
2 was nearly −1048 MtCO
2 (equal to −8.6% compared with the period of January to April 2019). In the reverse series, major variations were mentioned in China, with the reduction estimated to be up to −242 MtCO
2, followed by the USA with the reductions estimated to be up to −207 MtCO
2, then for Europe −123MtCO
2, and India with a reduction up to −98MtCO
2. Hence, Zand and Heir [
15] mainly investigated the direct health issues associated with Cοvid-19 rather than environmental aspects. On the other hand, the financial crisis interconnected with COVID-19 was noticeably different from other former crises.
The COVID-19 pandemic has created an interesting and challenging condition from many angles. From a scientific point of view, the COVID-19 pandemic has a clear impact on social, economic, and environmental dimensions globally. To date, there are limited studies related to the direct effects of COVID-19 on waste production, management, and treatment, and as well, there is almost zero research on the impact on coastal areas. Worldwide, an unprecedented challenge to fight COVID-19 along with the myriad COVID-19 waste products that are being produced, i.e., personal protective mask, gloves, napkins etc., are vital, as indicated by Ilyas et al. [
6]. Testa et al. [
16] indicated that several studies stress the examination of the impact of a single policy on environmental performance, while Klemes et al. [
17] studied the short and long-term variations in plastic waste management. Nghiem et al. [
18] investigated the impact of the pandemic on the sewage sector and showed that COVID-19 can be transmitted through non-hazardous waste from healthcare facilities. Vaka et al. [
19] investigated the status of solar energy systems in Malaysia and the effects on waste-to-energy and waste investment taxes. Moreover, Zambrano-Monserrate et al. [
9] focused on challenges faced by the waste management system in Teheran and highlighted the amount that health care waste had increased, as well as the illegal separation and recycling of wastes. Additionally, Saadat et al. [
2] discussed the environmental aspects and socioeconomic characteristics of the COVID-19 pandemic. Kulkarni and Anantharama [
3] proposed an alternative approach to Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) treatment during the pandemic, and they indicated that waste-to-energy could be a valuable solution, as the proposed technology could reduce their volume by 80–95%. During Pyrolysis (which usually take place at 350–550 °C) [
20] and the Gasification process, in which waste decomposed at temperature up to 850 °C or more [
3], a few more benefits are included, such as energy recovery [
20], mineralization, control and immobilization of hazardous substances, and resource preservations [
21]. Hence, Di Maria et al. [
22] reported that the EU states that there is no scientific evidence of the transmission of the virus through household waste management.
Without a doubt, with or without a pandemic, waste (in the strict sense of the definition) will continue to grow internationally [
23,
24,
25,
26,
27], and according to many researchers [
27,
28,
29,
30,
31], there are plentiful explanations related to the production of waste from citizens (i.e., advertising effects, absence of educational programs, level of incomes, and quality of life, etc.). However, to the best of our knowledge, there is no other paper related to the estimation and the assessment of the waste accumulation rate and clean coast index during the planet lockdown in any coastal area. The number of arrivals, as indicated in
Figure 1, has continually increased since 1995 for the entire tourist destinations, and this expansion is considered vital for many economies. The hospitality industry makes significant contributions to local economies creating employment and investment prospects, but rapid growth has been a major cause of many adverse environmental issues [
30,
32]. In addition, according to many studies [
33,
34,
35,
36], pollution in the coastal environment is a serious and an important issue for many tourist destinations due to the massive tourist activities. Rangel-Buitrago et al. [
33] mentioned that the distribution of plastics, and their relative negative effects, have been documented in all coastal and marine environments. Rapp et al. [
34] declared that large quantities of exogenous plastics waste had been recently detected in the Canary Islands due to illegal dumping at sea. Moreover, the pressure in the coastal zones [
34] is mostly affected by the citizen density, which has a direct consequence on waste accumulation. Paler et al. [
35] concluded that marine litter in coastal areas is a global problem, as it has also affected coastal areas in the Philippines. The Clean Coast Index (CCI) was used to assess several kinds of waste litter, such as wooden, biodegradable, on the beach. Pervez et al. [
36] indicated that solid waste debris is considered a serious environmental aspect for any coastal environment. On the other hand, China has given limited attention to the impact of solid waste debris on coastal zones compared with Australia and the USA [
36]. Pervez et al. [
36] mentioned that tourist activities have a direct effect on waste accumulation and highlight that higher population density leads to a higher amount of waste.
When holidays come to mind, for most people, the destination is located somewhere near a beautiful beach and coastal areas worldwide, in hotels, which are considered one of the most auspicious and at the same time sustainable businesses in the world. Historically, according to Ling [
37], the development of Island resorts for holiday destinations was first established almost 2000 years ago, and more specifically, when the Isle of Capri was suggested by Romans [
38]. However, the rapid evolution of tourist activities has totally changed, modified, and metabolized several areas over the last century with direct and indirect effects, either on social, financial, or environmental dimensions. In terms of metabolism, tourist services have transformed a strong local agricultural economy into a strong tourism economy in 40 years. As shown in
Figure 2, the whole area was considered agricultural, and the most popular crops included potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, watermelon, etc. Within about 10 years (1985–1995), the rapid and massive expansion of tourism resulted in the metabolism of the entire area, as many services and infrastructures appeared (i.e., hotels, apartments, restaurants, shops, road infrastructures, etc.) to support the hospitality industry.
This paper focuses on the evaluation of one of the most popular and famous tourist areas on the island of Cyprus (Protaras) during the COVID-19 pandemic through the implementation of key performance indicators (KPIs). The KPIs applied were clean coast index (CCI); waste accumulation rate (WAR); waste accumulation index (WAI); waste compositional analysis of the municipal solid waste (C-MSW); the level of services (LOS); waste generation rate (WGR); waste recovery rate (WRR); recycle bins per population density (RPB); waste infrastructure (WI); waste bin capacity (WBC); micro-, meso- and macroplastics concentration. Moreover, a SWOT (S: Strength, W: Weaknesses: Opportunity, T: Threats) and PESTEL (P: Political, E: Economy, S: Social, T: Technical, E: Environment, L: Legislation) analysis was applied to evaluate key strategic approaches, using an internal and external matrix, considering (having in mind today’s surroundings) strengths and weakness.
Additionally, the study helps to classify the measures to be taken in real-time, for the Local Authorities to be able to monitor the coastal areas in a sustainable way and to control the waste production, including the concentrations of micro-, meso- and macroplastics.
4. Conclusions
At present, it is unclear how long and deep the crisis will be (concerning the COVID-19 pandemic), and how the recovery path will look, and, therefore, how waste production, waste management, waste accumulation, clean coast index, CO2 emissions, etc., will be affected or improved. Keeping track as it evolves, several KPIs can help to inform policymakers to be prepared for the next pandemic at all levels. Additionally, a pandemic (i.e., COVID-19) seems to temporarily improve all KPIs under examination, such as CCI, WAR, and WAI, etc. Nevertheless, a pandemic cannot be the panacea solution to control and minimize any environmental issue (i.e., waste, microplastics, CO2, etc.), but the solution is the development of a waste strategy to address all environmental problems. The COVID-19 pandemic can help all the competent authorities to readjust, redesign, and even more, to start from scratch to propose a new strategy, targeting the improvement in LOS, including the development of an awareness strategy, with the aim of turning coastal zones into SMART zones, or to propose prevention activities, as well as zero waste approached. Hence, the COVID-19 pandemic can play a significant role in how our environment was before and how it looks now, to tackle ourselves on how we must act on environmental protection. Furthermore, COVID-19 may have implications for future management strategies. Further research is needed in the sense of the behavior of tourism regarding environmental performance, as well as a detailed strategy in the nearest future related to the minimization of single-use plastics by providing motivation measures to the stakeholders, and tourism is vital.