Filenews 22 August 2021 - by Andreas Paraschos
The fires that have recently scorched vast areas of the Mediterranean basin, such as Italy, Greece and Turkey, have given the definition of a "climate crisis" a nightmarish content.
We also experienced it in Cyprus, when the fire that began on Saturday 3.7.2021 in mountainous Limassol from scorching prunings in Arakapas arrived in mountainous Larnaca and within a few hours left behind four dead and scorched earth of 55 sq.m. kilometres, with damages estimated at €6 million. However, the value of the lives lost, the forest, the flora and fauna that were destroyed are incalculable.
This is because a selfish person apparently thought that no one would see him if he burned his prunings, instead of paying a small fee for their disposal. By the same token, Cyprus is currently full of small rubbish dumps and very soon the taxpayers will have to pay an expensive price, due to the unconsciousness of a clique of professionals who, illegally and without the authorities mobilizing, reject solid waste and prunings where they do not catch their eye, instead of transferring it to the legal recycling plants. These are the things in Cyprus today, while in the rest of the European Union things are very strict.
It is inconceivable that this is
"If someone rejected waste anywhere in the Netherlands except for the appropriate recycling plants, he would lose his professional license and pay a hefty fine of €100,000 (instead of the €4,000 that is in Cyprus) because it is inconceivable that this is in the EU. In fact, this was said before the competent Minister of Environment, Costas Kadis, during a meal. Mrs Van Der Voort, seeing a series of photographs of us from waste disposal sites, expressed her surprise at the extent of the phenomenon of arbitrary dumping. She also noted the obvious risk that the Cypriot taxpayer will pay large fines that will be imposed by a Court of Justice of the Union in the country that does not control pollution. How did it come to us, within two and a half years since the final closure of Kotsiatis (28/02/2019), that Cyprus has been filled with dozens of small rubbish dumps? It is recalled that the EU referred the Kotsiatis case to the Court of Justice of the EU, which issued a conviction on July 18, 2013 against the Republic of Cyprus. This is because municipal solid waste must be properly treated in well-organised areas, but at the same time the management must be sustainable and rational. Therefore, this is not an unprecedented situation but a delinquent behaviour that gradually reaches its climax because the competent authorities hypnotize, apparently because the fines coming from the EU are quietly diffused in the wallets of taxpayers, while the pollution of the country continues by the offenders.
When carriers arbitrarily impertinent
All this situation, with discarded rubble and prunings, is created because some professionals, mainly transporters of solid waste (with skips), take the loads from their producers, i.e. building contractors or even individuals, for a fee ranging from €150 to €200 per skip and instead of transferring them to the licensed waste recycling plants, they throw them in ravines, cliffs, fields and lately in urban areas so that they can reap not only the transport price but also the recycling fee, but without recycling. An arbitrary and adventurous practice that violates the existing legislation by taking advantage of the obvious lack of control, to say the least. A suspicious logic would even look for some interweaving relationship between the control authorities and the skip operators in the sharing of the money spent daily on the transport of hundreds of tons of solid waste. Today, there are all over Cyprus recycling units of European standards for waste from excavations, constructions and demolitions (AEKK - Green Centres) and pruning management, which, however, are under-functioning since the huge volume of waste and prunings ends up everywhere except the units, with the visible danger that these, as they warned, will suspend their operations soon after.
