Development

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 System was developed in 7 months and was accredited on the 1^st of August 2006.

The Company

The company currently employees 17 staff members and is housed in modern well equipped offices in Nicosia.

The System

The System represents today about 800 companies and this number is steadily increasing.Regarding the coverage of population the System in three and a half years covered 85% of the population giving access to organized separate collection to all the urban areas of the island. The System covers up the districts of Nicosia, Limassol, Larnaka, Papho and Famagusta with the population of 650, 000 or 85% of the total Cypriot population and it will grow in terms of geographical coverage, at a quick rate in the years to come, with an aim to eventually cover every Municipality and Community of the island.

The Program

The collection program is based on three packaging streams that must be sorted at the households and have them separately collected.

The streams

The three streams are the following:
1. Paper stream: dry cardboard boxes and packaging paper containers together with newspapers, magazines, office paper and advertising leaflets.

2. Glass stream: Glass bottles and jars and other glass packaging of all colours.

3. PMD stream (Plastics, Metals and Drink Cartons): Plastic bottles, flasks and PET, PE and HDPE jars, metal packaging (aluminium and steel packaging) and paper based drink packaging (tetrapak).

There are two different methods of collection depending on the area and its characteristics.

The kerbside (door to door collection) in urban areas and bring points in touristic or rural areas.

The kerbside collection is based on door to door collection  with white transparent bags for PMD and brown bags for PAPER. Glass must be transferred to special bring points where there are green bell shaped bins.

The bring points collection is based on the collection from recycling points where the public must transfer sorted materials and place them in the correct bins. We have brown bins for paper, blue bins for PMD  and green bell shaped bins for glass.

The collection, sorting and treatment operations are outsourced to competent private sectors.