‘All measures followed for controversial tyre burning factory’

The environment department on Sunday defended issuing an environmental report for a factory in Ypsonas Limassol that intends to burn tyres to create fuel, saying all necessary legal procedures.

The factory hit the headlines this week when the mayor of Ypsonas complained of the environmental and health impacts the operation of such a factory would entail. The issue was also discussed at the House commerce committee.

The department said it had taken them nine years to issue an opinion on the Bioland Energy Pyrolysis factory, which passed through all scientific and technical hurdles with the involvement of all competent state departments, as well as academics.

An Environmental Impact Assessment Study (EIA) was first submitted to the department in 2013, and it issued an opinion in 2021. This was made official in March of this year.

“All the necessary assessments, evaluations, emission models based on the proposed fuel had been carried out, and the systems of gaseous emission assurance equipment were evaluated,” the department said, adding it also investigated the liquid fuel that would be produced.

Any licence for the factory to operate will include detailed definition of the specific air emission limits and their monitoring systems, the department said.

Ypsonas mayor Pantelis Georgiou said the waste that the company will be dealing with creates specific pollutants, which are dangerous for the residents in the area.

Citing the environmental department report, he said these pollutants “have toxic properties which accumulate in humans and animals and are deposited far away from where they are released.”