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Yesterday Bulgaria returned an illegal waste shipment to General Recycling SA, the existence of which was revealed by the newspaper Kathimerini. Initially, the shipment detected by the Bulgarian authorities should have been returned to the recyclable waste sorting facility in Aspropyrgos from where it had come. As is clear from the examination of the environmental inspectors, the trucks transported baled waste instead of recyclable waste. Now the authorities have to investigate why the company General Recycling SA had sent waste to Bulgaria and what happened to it.

According to sources of the newspaper Kathimerini, the Bulgarian Ministry of Environment and Water had notified the Greek authorities on 31 March for the first time that it had detected an illegal waste shipment of the company General Recycling SA.

The shipment remained on the border for more than two months until the authorities decided how to return it. Originally, 15 May was set as the date of its return but it was changed because of problems with the Bulgarian transporting company. However, a fire broke out at the waste sorting facility in Aspropyrgos at that time and it was decided to take the shipment to the waste sorting facility of company Spider (50% of which is owned by General Recycling SA) in Ioannina.

Two days ago, the environmental inspectors checked the shipment on the highway Egnatia Odos and established that it did not contain waste of plastic packaging (as declared) but mixed baled waste (plastic, paper, cardboard, aluminium, etc.). The shipment has provoked many questions. The first one is if the facility in Aspropyrgos had baled the waste or if it had come from an area in the country where waste baling is a "temporary solution." Moreover, what was its fate in Bulgaria?

There was a similar case in 2010 when the Bulgarian authorities had informed the Greek authorities that they had found at Kulata-Promachonas border checkpoint a shipment of General Recycling SA, from the facility in Aspropyrgos. The examination carried out on the border by the environmental inspectors had established that the shipment, which should have contained plastic packaging of a certain kind, in fact illegally contained other types of plastic waste that was the result of machining rather than of sorting at the facility, as it should have.

A subsequent inspection at the waste sorting facility in Aspropyrgos established a number of violations (a statement confirming the violation dated 13 Oct. 2011), the main one being related to the existence of a small dumping ground near the facilities of the company. "The inspection established large quantities of all types of waste piled up outside the company facilities, particularly near the company entrance, without control and precautions, and without the place being fenced off. The waste is in direct contact with the environment due to which it is in poor condition, exposing to danger public health," state the inspectors. The case ended with a fine of 132,300 euro imposed on General Recycling SA by the decentralized administration of Attica (22 Feb. 2012).

An interesting detail: according to the sources of the newspaper Kathimerini, the medicines that the inspectors found in Aspropyrgos a few days ago (individual packages and blisters) had not expired.