EXPLORING WASTE MANAGEMENT INFRASTRUCTURE IN ALBANIA

Abstract

This study explores the issue of marine plastic pollution along the Albanian coastline, with a focus on the Bay of Vlorë, and examines the legal and institutional frameworks governing its marine waste management. The research adopts a mixed-method approach, combining quantitative data from drone-based monitoring conducted by Second Life with qualitative analysis of legal and policy documents. The study concludes that in the absence of effective, territory-wide waste management systems and consistent policy enforcement, Albania remains unable to meet the core environmental requirements set by key EU directives on marine waste management. This undermines environmental protection efforts and poses a serious obstacle to the country’s progress toward European Union accession.

Introduction

Developing countries like Albania are often the most severely impacted by coastal pollution. According to (Çoni and Madhi, 2023) this is usually due to the unsolicited and unprotected development of these areas. The coastline experiences a dual disadvantage of climate change and rising tourism, which is worsened by poor systematic infrastructures and changing urban landscape. Akin to the impact of low waste development infrastructure in countries of similar economic and regional status, Albania is ranked as the second country in Europe with the highest pollution-related deaths (Europe’s State of the Environment 2020: Change of Direction Urgently Needed to Face Climate Change Challenges, Reverse Degradation and Ensure Future Prosperity, n.d.) Marine plastic pollution has emerged as a critical issue in Albania, with drone-based evidence revealing a persistent accumulation that extends beyond popular tourist destinations. In response to growing environmental concerns, Albania has adopted several EU environmental directives, such as the Water Framework Directive and Marine Strategy Framework Directive. However, despite these formal commitments, the country continues to face challenges in ensuring effective coastal protection, as implementation of these regulatory frameworks remains inconsistent. This contradiction between legal transposition and practical enrollment is a core theme of our paper. 

Materials and Methods

This research employs both quantitative and qualitative methods, with a primary emphasis on qualitative analysis. The quantitative component draws on two main sources of descriptive data on plastic pollution: first, data generated internally by Second Life, which employs drone technology to monitor and document the presence and distribution of marine litter along the Albanian coastline; and second, publicly available data from internet-based environmental sources, including visual and textual materials that illustrate the scale and distribution of coastal pollution. These sources include the websites and publications of international organizations, such as the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which provide regionally and globally relevant data on marine litter. The qualitative component comprises an interpretive analysis of institutional and legal frameworks, drawing on primary sources such as European Union directives—specifically, the Directive on Environmental Liability, the Water Framework Directive, and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive—as well as United Nations documents and relevant national legislation. This is supplemented by secondary sources, including academic journal articles, policy reports, and scholarly books. Together, these methods provide a comprehensive understanding of both the physical manifestations of marine plastic pollution and the legal and institutional mechanisms intended to address it.

Results 

Drone surveys conducted by Second Life in the Bay of Vlorë revealed significant plastic pollution, particularly in areas located 1–2 kilometers from tourist beaches. While the main beachfronts appeared clean and maintained, remote sections of the coastline contained large amounts of unmanaged waste, including plastic bottles, bags, and packaging materials. These findings suggest that litter is being displaced rather than properly collected or treated. No visible infrastructure for waste management was observed in these zones. Additional data from international sources, including UNEP and IUCN, confirm that Albania remains a notable contributor of plastic waste to the Mediterranean.

Ishmir Delta, Albania 2025

Discussions

1. Water Framework Directive  (WFD)

   
   

In 2006, Albania adopted the Water Framework Directive (WFD) through its national legislation with the Law on Integrated Resource Management (Law No. 111/2012). This marked its alignment with European Union water management standards, contradicting an earlier assumption that it was adopted in 2006. The foundational EU legislation for the WFD framework is Directive 2000/60/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council 23 October 2000 (OJ L 327, 22.12.2000, p.1-73), which broadly aims to halt the deterioration of all European Union water bodies, including rivers, lakes, groundwater, transitional, and coastal waters, while striving to achieve a “good status” for them, inherently involving pollution reduction and prevention. 

Central to the WFD (2006) are the specific mandates outlined in its articles. Article 4 (1) explicitly obliges Member States to “prevent the deterioration of the status of all bodies of Surface water and groundwater: and concurrently to “achieve good status for surface waters and groundwater.” Furthermore, it demands that pollution from “priority substances” be progressively reduced, and emissions, discharges, and losses of “priority hazardous substances” be phased out. This commitment to pollution control is reinforced by Article 16(8), which details that strategies against water pollution must include the setting of “environmental quality standards for these substances for all surface waters,” and Article 16(6) the adoption of measures for “the progressive reduction of emissions, discharges and losses of priority substances and, in particular the phasing-out of emissions, discharges and losses of ‘priority hazardous substances’”.

However, while Albania has adopted the WFD framework, Second Life has found that illegal trash sites and coastal litter represent a significant and ongoing challenge to its full compliance, as evidenced by data collected from Second Life’s drones. The presence of unmanaged waste on coastlines and at illegal dumps directly undermines the directive's core mandates to achieve and maintain “good ecological and chemical status” for coastal waters, and to uphold the “non-deterioration” principle. Furthermore, the leaching of priority substances: from various types of refuse, such as plastics, directly contradicts the WFD’s requirement for their progressive reduction and eventual phasing out from water bodies.

Although River Basin Management Plans are developed to identify such problems, Albania continues to face significant hurdles, including widespread illegal dumping, substantial marine litter, and gaps in waste management infrastructure and enforcement. Second Life’s observations indicate trash, primarily plastics (bottles and bags) and debris, is often relocated from seemingly clean tourist beaches to illegal sites just minutes away, even near luxury resorts, creating “oceans of trash” in the surrounding countryside. This practice, driven by a booming tourism sector which saw tourist numbers triple from 3.4 million in 2014 to almost 10 million today, reflecting an annual increase of 10-15%, has pushed infrastructure to its limits (Second Life, 2025). 

Consequently, non-touristy coastal areas and their beaches are often left unmanaged and become unswimmable due to overwhelming trash, as limited infrastructure forces the government to prioritize cleanups in tourist zones under international pressure. Ultimately, while coastal areas may appear clean, this often comes at the cost of environmental degradation elsewhere, which collectively impedes Albania’s progress towards the WFD’s water quality objectives.^[1] 

2. Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) 

   
   

In February 2024, Albania adopted the new Law on the Marine Environment Protection Strategy, which partially aligns with the Marine Strategy Framework Directive of the EU (2008/56/EC) (MSFD) (FAOLEX, 2024). The newly adopted Law is one of several laws in Albanian national legislation to implement MSFD (or Marine Strategy at the European level), which is based on the Barcelona Convention of 1976 (Mandić, 2017). The MSFD has a broad scope and is grounded in a holistic, ecosystem-based approach, with the primary goal of achieving Good Environmental Status (GES) of marine waters. (Keçi, 2023). MSFD provides a broad direction for a state regarding what to include in its means of implementing the marine strategy (Keçi, 2023). The official Marine Environment Protection Strategy of the Republic of Albania is to be approved within eight years after the law comes into force (FAOLEX, 2024).

To help states identify GES, Annex 1 of the MSFD sets out qualitative descriptions (Annex 1, EU 2008/56/EC). These qualitative descriptions are the mandatory key criteria for determining the GES of the marine region or subregion (Article 5, EU 2008/56/EC). One of the most significant is descriptor 10, which focuses on preventing harm to the coastal and marine environment from marine litter. Different categories are included in marine litter pollution: artificial polymer material (plastics), rubber, clothing/textiles, paper/cardboard, metal, and wood (Mandić, 2017). The United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) in its prominent report, “From Pollution to Solution,” stressed the long-lasting, detrimental effects of plastic, especially microplastics, on human health and the climate (UNEP, 2021). By 2030, the amount of plastic waste is projected to reach 53 million tons per year, compared to 19-23 million tons per year in 2016 (UNEP, 2021). By integrating advanced technology, a community-based approach, and human rights principles, Second Life contributes directly to achieving Good Environmental Status (GES) under the Marine Strategy Framework Directive - particularly Descriptor 10 on marine litter - in the Mediterranean region, which faces a disproportionately high burden of plastic pollution.^[2]

The Mediterranean accumulates 7% of the global microplastics, while holding only 1% of the global waters (IUCN, 2025). It makes the region one of the most vulnerable and impacted: it experiences global warming 20% faster than the global average and holds the highest number of threatened marine habitats in Europe (IUCN, 2025). Albania stands in the 5th place in contributing to the plastic leakage (for macroplastics and microplastics) to the Mediterranean sea (around 10,000 tonnes per year), and in the 3rd place regarding per capita plastic leakage (3 kg per person each year) (Boucher and Billard, 2020). Reflecting Albania’s significant contribution to regional plastic leakage, the Second Life mission collected 11,250 kilograms of waste between March and April 2025 along the heavily impacted shores of Kavaja, the Ishëm Delta, and Durrës - areas representative of the broader challenges facing the Mediterranean coastline.^[3] Furthermore, Albania has the largest number of marine litter items on the Adriatic Coast – 66.8% of 77,876 marine litter items, or 5,233.6 kg, which is higher than in Italy (18.9%) and in Montenegro (14.3%) (Mandić, Gvozdenović, Vito, Alfonso, 2022). The majority of items found on Albanian beaches belonged to Artificial Polymer Materials (ATM) (Mandić, Gvozdenović, Vito, Alfonso, 2022). In the region, the Adriatic Sea is recognized as one of the most polluted seas in terms of marine litter pollution (Mandić, 2017).

The most recent data findings from the Second Life project offer precise visual documentation of plastic pollution along the Albanian Adriatic coastline. Drone-based surveys over the Bay of Vlorë capture the extent and distribution of plastic debris in coastal zones, providing a spatially detailed view of pollution beyond the reach of routine beach maintenance. Furthermore, just in one week of April the Second Life Mission collected 5.5 tonnes of waste at the coastline of Vlöre. This joint data not only enhances understanding of the geographic spread of marine litter but also proves weak local waste governance, characterized by the absence of a functional, territory-wide waste management infrastructure.^[4]

If plastic waste is merely relocated rather than properly collected and treated, achieving Good Environmental Status (GES) under Article 5 of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive will remain unfeasible for Albania. There is an urgent need for legal compliance and year-round management of coastal zones. 

Conclusion

This study highlights the ineffective and inconsistent response of Albania to marine plastic, with a particular focus on the Bay of Vlorë. Despite partial alignment with EU directives such as the Water Framework Directive and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive, there is a gap in consistent implementation practices. These seem to depend on the tourist-centric economy and the discontinuous geography of Albanian coastlines. Drone-based observations reveal that unmanaged marine plastic waste is frequently displaced to remote coastlines, which undermines EU and national-level Environmental Governance goals. Without a strict nationwide implementation plan, Albania’s coastline will continue to deteriorate and remain unable to meet the standards set for EU accession. Addressing these gaps in execution will not only increase the accountability for stronger legal compliance but also the political will to sustain long-term environmental governance. 

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^[1] This information is raw data from videos taken by Second Life in Albania

^[2] Second Life (2025)

^[3] Second Life (2025)

^[4] Second Life (2025)