Mon, Apr 10, 2017 page14

• Greece struggles to boost recycling

  • AFP, ATHENS
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  A steady stream of EU fines and two decades of trying have failed to get recycling started in Greece, where eco-awareness is only half-heartedly promoted by authorities.

  According the European Environment Agency, only 16 percent of household waste is recycled across the nation, compared with a 50 percent target by 2020 under EU directives.

  The European recycling average is 28 percent, with Slovenia leading at 49 percent and Latvia bringing up the rear at 3 percent.

  In Athens, with nearly 4 million inhabitants out of the nation’s 11 million, only 13 percent of eligible waste is recycled, town hall figures show.

  “We don’t have a clear strategy and then we don’t have a political will to materialize this strategy,” said Dimitris Ibrahim, a spokesman for the Greek branch of Greenpeace.

  Around many parts of the country, and especially in the countryside, garbage is still scattered piecemeal in makeshift dumps — one of them on a hillside on the island of Andros actually collapsed under the strain in 2011, burying a beach below in the process.

  In 2014, Greece still had about 70 dumps, most of them tolerated if not actively run by municipal authorities.

  In June 2014, nearly a decade after a prior conviction, Greece was ordered to pay a fine of nearly 15 million euros (US$15.9 million at the current exchange rate) every six months over the continued operation of illegal landfills.

  This despite the country’s prized tourism industry that requires an unspoiled environment.

  The European Court of Justice has repeatedly condemned Greece on this score, levelling fines amounting to millions of euros, with the latest ruling in September last year.

  “The mentality needs to change, and urgently,” Ecological Recycling Society association head Antigone Dalamaga said.

  It takes “incentives and counter incentives ... you need to convince your citizens of the necessity and of the positive affect of recycling,” she said.

  Even today, Greeks are only encouraged to sort out their household waste on a voluntary basis. No fines are involved.

  Mary Krimnanioti, who runs the EU-funded “Zero Waste” program in Greece, said the logic behind the municipal waste collection — which charges residents depending on property size — is flawed.

  “It is not [calculated] according to the waste you throw away, it’s according to the [surface area in] square meters of your house,” she said.

  Therefore, a small house with 10 people, which every day throws out 10 garbage bags, pays the same as one person living in an equivalent home.

  If people had to pay for their garbage bags, as is the case in northern Europe, they would be more motivated to throw out less, Krimnanioti said.

  Instead, most Greeks just put their trash is plastic supermarket bags, which are freely available at the check-out counter.

  The economic crisis gripping the country since 2010 has helped a little, with people buying less and throwing away less too.

  In Athens alone, waste generation fell by around 35 percent between 2011 and last year, according to municipal figures.

  A another recent phenomenon — mass immigration — has also found itself linked to waste management, albeit of an irregular sort beyond the scope of official statistics.

  To make a living, many economic migrants now hunt the streets of Athens and other major cities for metal, paper and plastic, hoping to sell it to scrapyards.

  Roma groups ply a similar trade, and have in the past been chased down by authorities for burning plastic cables to get at the copper within, polluting the environment in the process.
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