Last-ditch effort being made to close landfills

With the European Court set to announce the total fine for Greece’s flouting of European waste management laws on December 2, the Environment Ministry’s general secretary Nadia Giannakopoulou said the government had intensified its coordination with local and regional authorities to close down dozens of illegal landfills around the country.

Emphasizing that the responsibility for closing down illegal landfills was that of local and regional authorities, Giannakopoulou said that, in view of the looming deadline, meetings were being held in a bid to close down most of the landfills; failing that, trash will be transferred to neighboring regions with better waste facilities or packaged and stored as a temporary solution, she said.