The Eco-Innovation Observatory is basically a place where people gather and study lots of information about eco-friendly innovations and the circular economy. They collect this information from different parts of Europe and other important economic areas in the world. This helps companies and organizations that work on innovation get all the information they need in one place. It also helps policymakers make good decisions when creating new policies. In the report Eco-innovation is defined as “Eco-innovation is any innovation that reduces the use of natural resources and decreases the release of harmful substances across the whole life-cycle”.
Eco-innovation is very important in Greece due to its susceptibility to extreme pollution in ecosystems and climate change having many islands. Policy regarding Greece’s environment is focused on renewable energy and energy efficiency that follows eco-innovation. In 2018 Greece is ranked low out of all of the countries in terms of eco-innovation performance, with a score of 75 getting closer to EU’s average of 100. In 2020 the environmental performance index ranked Greece 25 globally overall. The country’s air quality, fish stocks, and GHG emissions intensity are all about average. However the country struggles with air emissions from transport and electricity power stations. There are also obstacles regarding loss of biodiversity, overexploitation of water resources, and degradation of coastal zones. In terms of the use solar thermal energy, Greece is continuously thriving better than most countries.
Due to the Waste Management plan there has been a reduction in the pressure from regeneration and treatment of waste. No matter what, there still continues to be a problem with illegal landfills. Greece lacks facilities to handle this issue of the illegal landfills and all the hazardous waste produced overall. Although they are doing better at waste recycling, they still fall behind when trying to meet the 2020 municipal waste recycling target of 50%.
During Greece’s most recent economic crisis most of their money and resources were focused on research and development and they couldn’t pay enough attention to improve the protection of the country’s environment. Thankfully, the economy has made significant progress. The economy is mainly based on tourism, shipping, and the public sector. Greece’s strengths are in organizational and marketing innovations and their weaknesses are technical improvements. Small companies, especially the ones that are just starting out, have a hard time getting money because banks and other financial organizations are afraid of taking risks. Currently the support for research and innovation mostly relies on being able to use money from the European Union’s funds for development and research.
