Recycling will progress too slowly without legislative measures, Green Dot says

Progress achieved in recycling in 2016 was significant, Green Dot general manager Kyriakos Parpounas said on Wednesday in an interview with the Cyprus News Agency.

But he added that substantial legislative measures such as “pay as you throw” programmes needed to be put in place for further improvements in recycling.

In 2016, recycling of packaging in general was up by 20 per cent compared to 2015, reaching 60,871 tonnes compared to 51,000 tonnes in 2015.

The recycling of electric and electronic equipment waste was up by 16 per cent reaching 2,285 tonnes compared with 1,970 tonnes in 2015.
Parpounas also said the recycling of batteries “was up by 5.5 per cent reaching 57.43 tonnes in 2016 compared to 54.43 tonnes in 2015”.
Parpounas said the greatest increase in recycling had been in paper and cardboard boxes and PMD (paper, metal, drink boxes).

“PMD and glass were recycling streams which were collected almost in total from homes and their improvement depends almost exclusively on the public`s participation,” he said.
“In 2016 we had an increase of the order of 5 per cent to 6 per cent in these two streams, which reflects an improvement in the public`s participation,” he noted.
On the other hand, he said, “paper/cardboard boxes constitute the main material collected by recycling companies directly from trading sites as a commercial/industrial packaging.”
Parpounas said that in the last three years new and existing recycling companies had focused on recycling regards paper and cardboard boxes due to the economic crisis.

As a result, in 2016, collection of paper/cardboard boxes reached 26,849 tonnes compared to 19,872 tonnes in 2015.
Asked how further improvement could be achieved, he cited legislative measures.

“We have been proposing this to the state for years but without unfortunately having a positive response.”
It was also imperative that participation in sorting at the source became mandatory and monitored he said.
Such measures, Parpounas said were in place in all countries with high recycling percentages and Cyprus could not “be an exception for ever”.
“If we just continue to focus on communication for the public`s awareness, which is what happens today, progress will be too slow and meeting the ambitious targets we have set for the future will be impossible,” he warned.