Introduce recycling centres

Sir,

I refer to the recent letter by M Gray (‘Rubbish disgrace’, March 5) regarding the illegal dumping of rubbish in the countryside and elsewhere.

It is indeed deplorable that a minority of citizens use the countryside as a dumping ground for all kinds of old appliances, furniture and other bulky domestic rubbish, which the weekly municipal refuse services will not collect.

Penalties and fines for such practices should of course be available, but these are unlikely to have any significant effect, since illegal dumping is usually done in remote areas, and out of sight.

Of more practical benefit would be the provision of public disposal facilities, strategically placed around the island, and provided by the municipalities as an essential public service. If such public facilities were to exist, citizens would have no reason to resort to illegal dumping in the countryside.

Such public facilities exist in most western European countries, where thankfully, illegal dumping in the country is quite rare.

As well as directly benefiting the environment by substantially reducing unsightly rubbish, these disposal facilities are typically organised with several large skips, in such a way as to facilitate recycling, i.e. one skip for metal, another for paper and cardboard, one for garden waste, etc. In my own experience, recycling centres, as they are known, exist in every town, and are very much used by the local populations.

Steven Kimberley, Nicosia