Background The management of solid waste – particularly the disposal of solid waste – is one of the most acute environmental problems in Greece and one that calls for immediate and efficient action. Waste disposal in landfills is the most common method of managing municipal solid waste (MSW); 82% of the waste generated in Greece in 2011 was disposed of in landfills. Most of the waste dumps are located in remote areas such as mountains and islands. The target areas of the project, the municipality of Naxos and Small Cyclades islands and the municipality of Ancient Olympia, comprise remote areas facing similar problems. Waste management in the South Aegean relies completely on illegal practices since waste is disposed in uncontrolled landfills. Naxos has 11 uncontrolled landfills and was fined €42 500 on 28 June, 2014 for uncontrolled dumping of waste at the Ksirocampos dump. Transportation costs for recyclable materials are prohibitive and so what is generated by the four surrounding islands must be transported to the main island and from there to Athens by ship. The municipality of Ancient Olympia is in the Peloponnese, an area with the most illegal landfills in Greece. It consists of 42 rural communities, some of which are mountainous, and eight villages. Many of these places are remote incurring high fuel consumption and high transportation costs to reach. The recyclable material is transferred to the central material recovery facility, located 115 km away. Of the 4 000 tonnes of MSW generated annually, only 400 tonnes are recycled. The rest is dumped in uncontrolled landfills. Waste is compressed and baled in two tonne bales and stored temporarily. The compressed waste is then transferred to the nearest landfill which is located 151 km away. The gate fee is €80 per tonne, and with transportation costs, the total amounts to €160 per tonne. Objectives The PAVEtheWAySTE project aims to facilitate the implementation of the Waste Framework Directive in remote areas by enabling local and regional authorities to improve their municipal waste recycling performance and thus pave the way to high resource efficiency. The objective is to demonstrate an innovative, environmentally and technically feasible recycling technology for the fine separation and treatment of municipal solid waste in remote areas. The system will be able to sort and treat different types of recyclable and organic waste in order to recover end products of high quality and purity. Companies in the recycling industry will be engaged to ensure that the end products satisfy market specifications. Specific objectives are to: Establish an integrated, replicable system for source separation and treatment of MSW for remote areas; Treat MSW at source avoiding waste collection, transportation and treatment of MSW in central recovery facilities; Recover the maximum possible resources, generating more than five streams of clean materials thus contributing to diversion of waste from landfills; Inform and train citizens on how to sort different types of recyclable material through innovative prototype systems, operated by specially trained personnel; Assess the quality and marketability of end products in correlation with local/regional market specifications and industry specific standards; and Make recycling of waste an economically attractive option for remote areas with high transportation costs (reduction of waste management costs by 50%). Expected results: New method for recycling of MSW in remote areas developed and demonstrated; Increase in recycling rate for all MSW in Olympia from 9 to 60% and in Naxos from zero to 50%, by fine sorting and compression of different types of recyclable waste at source; Halving the amount of MSW ending up in landfills in three years; Waste from target areas going to dumps eliminated; Recovery of more than 1 600 tonnes of materials that would otherwise be landfilled; Installation and demonstration of nine innovative prototype units in target areas able to treat 500 kg of MSW per day; Production of high-quality materials that will be directed to local/regional recycling markets; Suggestions for full-scale implementation of the proposed innovative systems for each target area; and Two replication studies for transferring the project findings to two other municipalities (one in Spain and one in Greece).