Saturday, January 16, 2021

NEW ERA COMING IN HOUSEHOLD WASTE MANAGEMENT

 Filenews 16 January 2021 -  by Angelos Nikolaou



Water has been put in the groove for the rational management of household waste and now something is changing in our country in terms of protecting the environment and upgrading the quality of life of citizens. The head of the Waste Management Department at the Department of the Environment, Elena Stylianopoulou, analyses in "F" the new strategy for the management of household waste, which is based primarily on the definition of binding obligations of the Republic towards Brussels and now the Local Authorities undertake new obligations, which in order to be implemented requires the contribution of citizens.

"The aim is to enter the new era, to separate at source to have cleaner products and thus to promote the circular economy but at the same time to ensure the protection of the environment," Ms. Stylianopoulou describing the new waste legislation and the draft regulation as "very important in waste management". With the implementation of the "Pay As I throw" system and the introduction of variable fees for mixed waste, households and businesses will pay fees only for gross municipal waste that they dispose of as gross and not for those that recycle. "No longer will the citizen be able to put all the garbage together. Sorting must be carried out at source to reduce waste destined for burial. Distinguish recyclable, organic and other flows that can be separated," says the senior official at the Environment Department.

The citizen, he said, will now have an incentive to reduce the costs he currently pays to the local Authority for waste management if he takes appropriate action.

According to Mrs Stylianopoulou there is planned support from the structural funds for projects providing for techno-economic support for local authorities for the establishment of separate municipal waste collection systems and the invitation is expected to be announced in the first quarter of 2021.

The Department of the Environment will appeal to all municipalities, communities, clusters, and community groups of more than 2,000 inhabitants in total, in order to submit proposals on how to do the sorting at source. These proposals will be evaluated with a view to implementing measures to enable residents to be properly informed about the operation of the systems to be installed.

He took the legislative work in turn.

The debate on the government's waste law concerning the separate collection of recyclable and organic waste and the sorting of waste at source, as well as the introduction of the "I pay what I throw away" system, began in the Parliamentary Committee on the Environment. This programme is already in place in several European countries and is based on the purchase of a specific waste bag, at a relatively high cost.

The citizen will try to fill as few garbage bags as possible because with more bags he will pay more. Therefore, it will be pushed to send to another course the materials, which can be recycled and the bags filled only with those, which cannot be recycled.

The aim is to apply the prepaid bag

Mrs Stylianopoulou said that the prepaid bag policy for household waste would be implemented and this emerged after a study conducted by the Department of the Environment. Today, only the Municipality of Aglantzia applies a system "Pay as much as I throw" with the system of prepaid bag. The cost of the bag will be determined through the studies of the Local Authorities for the implementation of the PDO.

However, it is noted that the Municipality of Aglantzia has the prepaid purple bag in three sizes (56 litres, 35 litres and 10 litres) in order to provide different solutions for the different needs of its citizens. The bags are sold at €2 for 56 litres, €1.5 for 35 litres and €0.40 for 10 litres and included in this price is the taxation of dogs.

This is a major change, he noted, since the proposed regulations would significantly strengthen the separate collection of municipal waste and its preparation for reuse and recycling, contributing to the achievement of The European objectives for separate collection, preparation for reuse and recycling and the reduction of quantities resulting in landfilling, as well as to the protection of the environment and human health.

The new ambitious targets for separate waste collection and rational management and recycling of packaging waste are set for 2035. In particular, The European targets for the preparation for reuse and recycling of all municipal waste are adopted at 55% by 2025, 60% by 2030 and 65% by 2035. The target of recycling 65% of packaging waste is also adopted. The big bet is to end up with only 10% of municipal waste for landfill and after treatment.

In accordance with the Brussels waste requirements, measures are needed to establish a separate collection of municipal waste for at least paper, metals, plastics and glass and, from 1 January 2025, textiles and hazardous fractions of waste produced by households, as well as the separate collection of organic waste by 31 December 2023.