The garden waste problem

By Annette Chrysostomou
With the gardening season well and truly upon us, many of us will be guiltily sneaking our pulled-up weeds and cuttings into general rubbish bags, hiding them among all the rest of our other unrecycled garbage
We do it partly because we can – we don’t have to recycle – and partly because we don’t know what else to do with it. But there comes a point when the piles become overwhelming, and there’s no sneaking them away.
Problem is, in the absence of a comprehensive national legislation, the public is confused about what to do with their garden waste, and municipalities deal with the problem in various ways.
“There is an EU directive which people follow, but a more specific legislation is pending,” a spokesman at the Union of Cyprus Municipalities (UCM) said.
“There are cleaning campaigns by the municipalities,” he added. “People are informed to leave their waste outside on specific dates and this is usually free.”
Organic waste has to be taken to specific tips and cannot just be transported to the two legal dumps, Vati or Kotsiatis, said the municipality union spokesman. However, that doesn’t always happen.
According to Kyriakos Parpounas, the manager of private recycling company Green Dot, three private facilities deal with such waste. Two are in the Nicosia area and one in the Larnaca district. The Nicosia municipality uses the private facilities as well as the Kotsiatis landfill.
But in the other districts where no such facilities exist, the waste ends up in landfills.
But the problem for the public who want to dispose of their garden waste is where to find the relevant information. This can be time consuming and in some towns extremely difficult.
There is no phone number for obtaining information for the whole of Cyprus, nor a website guiding them where to turn. All municipalities have websites with contact numbers, but the name of the relevant department can vary widely. And, of course, not all the information is available in English.
Nicosia fares pretty well on the information front. There are detailed instructions available on the web – if you know where to find them. The municipality has announcements with all the relevant details on its website (in Greek only), but how many people browse through these?
On the Limassol municipality website, phone numbers for the various departments are listed in English and Greek, though again you have to know exactly which one you are looking for. But it doesn’t help much. The cleaning services are not responsible, but the public health services are – only they are not on the list.
Paphos is impossible. Neither the municipal cleaning services nor the environment services are responsible. According to the mayor’s office the only person who could give out information on the subject has recently stopped working for the municipality, apparently without being replaced.
Here is a summary of how the different municipalities deal with the waste and what the public can do.
Nicosia residents can take their waste to a green point in Kaimakli industrial area. In addition, the municipality collects all garden waste from people’s homes once a month. The dates for various areas are listed on the website and the service is free of charge. Those who need to dispose of garbage at other times should call the municipality.
The only charge is if there is a lot of garbage to be picked up. “Then there is a fixed charge, but only when there is a huge amount like half a lorry,” a spokesman for the municipality said.
In Koloni, Kissonerga and Peyia in Paphos there are also green points. People have to take their organic waste there, whether it is a small amount or a large one. If they don’t have transport they need to pay someone to transport it as the municipality doesn’t pick up garden waste – unless you’ve hidden it in your general trash.
No public green points currently exist in Larnaca and Limassol.
According to the Larnaca municipality there is one place where residents can take their green garbage. This is behind the Mackenzie car park where boxes for the disposal of organic waste are available. When people have big amounts, however, they should call a private company and these companies dispose of the garbage in their own facilities.
In Limassol, the municipality used to pick up all garbage, including garden waste, for free for years, the director of the public health services Dimitris Theoti told the Sunday Mail. He explained that two years ago the city council was forced to start charging due to a lack of funds, but like in Nicosia they only charge for transporting very large amounts. This is because not all lorries belong to the municipality but some are from private companies. Limassol has been divided into five areas, where green garbage and other special garbage such as old refrigerators are picked up on different days. Those interested in a collection need to call the municipality beforehand.
At the moment, all garbage is taken to the landfill at Vati but EU pressure means within two years the city will have to close this landfill and take measures to compost the material.
The interior ministry’s plans are that Limassol will have a green point only after Nicosia and the Famagusta area. One is planned in Ayios Athanasios but it is not clear if it will be able to serve all of Limassol, Theoti said. He added that initially one was planned near the British bases but the bases vetoed it.