ATHENS, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) -- Greece's largest region, Attica, where half of the country's population lives, launched a plan to promote recycling and drastically improve waste management by 2025, officials said here on Thursday.
The year 2020 will be dedicated to recycling, marking the beginning of a new era in waste management for Attica and Greece as a whole, Regional Governor of Attica Giorgos Patoulis told a press conference here.
The goal is to increase the amount of biowaste recycled in Attica from the current three percent of all waste to 40 percent annually by 2025, he said.
The authorities also aim to increase the rate of recycled packaging materials in the region from the current 5 percent to 15 percent by 2025, he added.
"We start with specific targets and timetables to give Attica, the largest region in the country, and one of the largest in Europe, a modern model of urban solid waste management, which is friendly for the environment and beneficial for public health," Patoulis said, stressing that the focus will be on recycling.
"By implementing a particular series of works, actions and interventions, we should be able to manage our waste in a modern way, according to European standards and directives by 2025," he said.
On Thursday, the region, in cooperation with municipalities and the central government, launched a public awareness campaign to promote recycling. By June this year, new garbage collection trucks will be put into operation and at least 9,000 brown garbage disposal bins will be installed across the region to help the collection of biowaste, the governor said.
The program is estimated to cost about 900 million euros (990 million U.S. dollars) and will create up to 10,000 new "green" jobs, Patoulis said.
The waste management problem and the plan to resolve it effectively concerns not only Attica, but the entire country, Interior Minister Takis Theodorikakos said at the event.
Greece is a laggard on recycling -- it ranks 24th in the European Union (EU). The current recycling rate is 18 percent in Greece, while the EU average is 45 percent.
The country has paid heavy fines in recent years for the mismanagement of waste.
"There is no growth, there is no sustainable economic prospect for Greece, there is no quality of life and there is no state and security if we do not resolve permanently within the next four years ... the issue of the management of solid waste. The Interior Ministry attaches great importance to the promotion of substantial recycling," Theodorikakos said.
"Much should have been done several years ago, not just yesterday. We have been talking for years about waste management. We should act as they are doing in the rest of Europe. We owe it to ourselves, to our children, to our country," Environment and Energy Minister Kostis Hatzidakis said.
