Each municipality will now be awarded within the framework of the initiatives promoting recycling, based on the amount of recovered materials attributed to him. This is provided for in a Decision signed by the Minister of Environment and Energy, Theodore Skylakakis.

It’s about her Ministerial Decision (MA), on the subject: “Calculation per O.T.A. first degree of the quantities of packaging waste and other recovered materials, as well as impurities, in the incoming waste stream at the Recyclable Materials Sorting Centers (KDAU)”.

Through YA, a uniform sampling method is established in the stream of incoming waste at Recyclable Materials Sorting Centers (KDAU)in order to calculate and assign per Municipality the amount of recovered materials attributable to it and resulting from sorting at the source of waste, as well as the corresponding impurities (residues).

The decision is in line with the principle “the polluter pays”. This means practically, that the Municipalities will assume the cost of managing the waste of the recycling bins, depending on their actual waste and not horizontally, as was done until now.

In the Decision, additional and uniform rules are set for the sampling, e.g. for the frequency, carried out by Municipality, but also for the used standards and control bodies.

The Minister of Environment and Energy, Mr. Thodoros Skylakakis, said in this regard: “Recognizing the value of recycling for the environment, we apply an absolutely fair system of rewarding the Municipalities, based on the amount of recovered materials that they are allocated. In this way, all Municipalities acquire yet another incentive to make an effort, in order to increase the amount of recycling that is done through the network of recycling bins, paper, etc.”

The General Secretary of Waste Management, Mr. Manolis Grafakos, noted: “It is of essential importance to issue the relevant YA, given that it attempts to render the actual recycling attributable to each Municipality. Up to now, recycling was determined by simply reducing the total amount of recyclable materials resulting from the sorting at the KDAY on the basis of the waste entry rate corresponding to each municipality. In this way, the Municipality that did good recycling (small percentage of impurities) was essentially equated with the one that did not perform well (high percentage of impurities). This is now changing and encourages Municipalities to try even harder to achieve a better quality of recycling in the network of bins they collect.”