The “pay as you throw” scheme, wherein people are forced to pay for special issue rubbish bags to have their rubbish collected, is to be expanded to 12 new municipalities and village clusters next year, Agriculture Minister Maria Panayiotou said on Wednesday.

Speaking to the House environment committee, she said the scheme is a “European Union obligation” and that it “should have been implemented last summer”.

As such, she said, it has been included in her ministry’s list of “immediate actions” and will be implemented with the “ultimate goal of better waste management, strengthening the sorting process at source, and reducing the percentage of waste which ends up in landfills”.

Despite these intentions, she said that only one municipality introduced a pay as you throw scheme last year – the Aradippou municipality – but that after 12 municipalities and village clusters implement the scheme next year, a total of 21 local authorities are expected to do so in 2026.

Committee members asked Panayiotou questions regarding the potential sanctions for local authorities which do not introduce the scheme, or for the Cypriot government from the EU, but other ministry officials said sanctions should be avoided because efforts are being made to implement the scheme.

She then moved on to the matter of the scheme’s cost, saying her ministry has allocated a total of €25 million for its rollout.

This figure covers the rollout of the scheme by local authorities until the end of 2026, with the money set to cover equipment, inspections, local information campaigns and provisions for vulnerable groups.

The equipment provided will include special bin lorries which will transport organic waste, as well as locks for bins, and vending machines for government-approved rubbish bags.

Akel MPs Nikos Kettiros and Marina Nikolaou expressed concerns regarding the potential for municipalities to pass extra costs onto local residents, and Panayiotou replied by saying that in the Nicosia suburb of Aglandjia, where a pilot scheme has been in place for several years, “the problems which should be managed were identified”.

With this in mind, she added that “a change in the people’s culture was observed” in Aglandjia when the scheme was implemented.