PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE ROLE OF INFORMAL SOLID WASTE RECYCLING: A CASE STUDY ON ROMA PEOPLE IN TIRNAVOS, GREECE.

Social economy in the western world constitutes nowadays of social enterprises in different possible types and offers possibilities of entrepreneurship activities and employment forms for various special population groups. Addressed in this work is the activity 'solid waste recycling' and the population group 'Roma people' in Greece, focusing in the field of technology wastes from end-of-life electric and electronic equipment. The dominant, starting-point peculiarity of this activity is that it is already on-going since many years in the form of informal recycling or scavenging and that it is challenged to adjust to the contemporary needs, standards and constraints of sustainable waste management, the challenge addressing equally the particular population group, as well as the involved competent authorities and licensed entities or systems for alternative solid waste management together with a number of other stakeholders. In this paper, a historic review of informal recycling in the western world and Greece is initially presented, whereby certain comparisons with developing countries in other continents, where informal recycling is still a widely applied practice, are also performed. Focusing on the case study area and the waste fraction of WEEE, a SWOT analysis and of a new social enterprise presented and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]