By Stefanos Evripidou
ACCESSION to the European Union in May 2004 brings with it a bundle of obligations and responsibilities, including a vast number of protection measures on the environment.
Industries face dramatic changes in their everyday operations if they wish to comply with EU obligations, or risk being left out of the loop.
One example of EU environmental measures is the ‘polluter pays’ principle, which clearly places responsibility with the producer.
Environmental Services officer, Costas Hadjipanayotou, told the Cyprus Mail that the ‘polluter pays’ principle dictated that a producer had an obligation, and the financial burden, to take measures to minimise the impact on the environment.
“The principle is wide-reaching and covers areas from dumping waste to packaging,” he said.
Asked about the dumping of chicken waste in Kokkinotrimithia reported last week in the Cyprus Mail, Hadjipanayotou said the Environmental Services were aware of the pools of chicken blood and body parts being dumped in fields by the Pipis Farm slaughterhouse, and were acting to put a stop to it.
Under the polluter pays principle, Pipis Farm is obligated to treat the waste it creates to reduce to a minimum any harmful effects on the environment. Hadjipanayotou said the farm had until December to build its own biological treatment centre where all the waste from the slaughterhouse could go.
The farm director admitted last week to dumping his waste in a field, saying it would be too expensive to transport it to designated areas.
Now, with the added pressure of EU obligations getting nearer, the farm has nine months to build its own treatment centre. Hadjipanayotou added that until December, the farm would have to take its waste to the central waste-water treatment centre at Vathia Gonia incurring expenses of around £150 per day.
The Environmental Services are giving the farm 10 days to start taking its waste to the centre or face being shut down.
“After accession, producers have environmental obligations, but citizens have the right to go to court for a remedy against damages too,” said Hadjipanayotou.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
