The Cypriot Minister of Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment, Mr. Photis Photiou, issued the licensing of the Collective Packaging Management System, organized by Green Dot Cyprus, with effect from the 1st of August 2006. This is the first license issued in Cyprus for this purpose, rendering the Green Dot Cyprus system currently the only active system in the local market. The license is valid for a six year period according to the Packaging Ordinance and can be renewed for successive six year periods.
Green Dot Cyprus currently represents 170 companies some of which are amongst the largest local trading companies. This number has been growing at a rate of about 15 new members per month. The accreditation of the system by the authorities should give a boost to this growth rate since the system will now become fully operational.
The planning of the system and the design of its operations have been prepared with the support of Fost-Plus, Belgium who have been chosen to act as consultants for the set-up of the system. The preparation of the first business plan and the submission of the application for accreditation were completed within a period of 7 months from the time of appointment. The initial planning has been accepted by the authorities almost completely and this will allow commencement of the operations right away since there are only very few adjustments to be made.
According to the planning, the operations for the collection and treatment of Commercial/Industrial Packaging will begin in the next few weeks. At the same time, a lot of preparatory work has been carried out for the initiation of projects for the collection and treatment of household packaging waste. These preparations will now get into a more concrete face with an aim to start collection from a number of municipalities by the end of the year. To this extent, the system will sign, in the next few days, contracts for the set-up of two regional sorting centres to support its projects for the first six years of operations. The collection of the packaging materials will be carried out mostly by kerbside collection in three streams, namely paper and carton, glass and mixed lightweight packaging (drink cartons, plastic bottles and flasks, aluminum and steel).
The system will grow in terms of geographical coverage, at a quick rate in the years to come, with an aim to eventually cover the whole of the island. Some of the most important challenges faced by the system are the small size of the market, the lack of local recycling infrastructure, and the high transportation costs to other markets due to the fact that the country is an island.
