Organisation
Green Dot (Cyprus) Public Co. Ltd was founded as a non-profit company on 17 July 2003 by the Cyprus Chamber of Commerce and Industry, as a response to the needs created by the harmonisation of the local legislation with the relative European Directive. Currently the chamber has about 8,000 companies and 126 professional associations as members.
Green Dot Cyprus as of the 1st of August 2006 represents 180 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 (01/08/2006) is expected to give a boost to this growth rate since the system will now eventually 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 September 2006. 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. 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.
GDC Public Co Ltd is not planning to run collection, sorting or treatment of packaging waste with own operations or equipment but instead to outsource the operations onto the interested public or private operators.
During the months September-November 2006 all the contractors for the collection, sorting and treatment (recovery or recycling) of the materials from the first phase of the System projects will be chosen via open tender procedures. During 2006 the system will cover five municipalities with a total population of 130,000 people which is about 17% of the total island population.
