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Portuguese Green Dot Group Attacked
From the July 2002 RLI, copyright 2002 Raymond Communications, Inc.
By Carlos Comohano
RLI Correspondent
A leading Portuguese environmental group has charged Sociedade Ponto Verde (SPV),
the green dot organization, with mismanaging its $10 million system, rewarding large
supermarkets and discriminating against local governments. The green organization plans to
file these claims against SPV at the Ministry of the Environment.
The problems began when SPV was authorized to collect industrial packaging in 2001,
in addition to post-consumer and small business packaging waste.
The group, Quercus, charges that SPV has established its own different recovery selection
methods depending on the type of packaging or the entity of the manufacturer,
thus discriminating against some companies in favor of others, while refusing to recover
packaging from other companies.
SPV responds that the greens are seeking political objectives and trying to confuse the
end consumer.
Pedro Carteiro, a spokesman for Quercus, said the law clearly states that SPV cannot
discriminate against any packaging. Nuno Garcia, SPV communications manager,
explained that SPV only accepts those packages that show the green dot symbol as a
guarantee that the manufacturer has paid for recycling services. But Carteiro claims
the key issue is the systematicnon-fulfillment of recovery and recycling targets.
"In 2001, SPV should have recycled 400,000 tons of waste, but it barely recycled 100 tons"
Carteiro said. "SPV has no financial means to meet the recovery and recycling targets" he
explained.
Quercus demands an immediate intervention from the Instituto dos Residuos
(The Waste Institute), the supervisory body of the Ministry of the Environment.
Garcia denies this, saying SPV "increased by 69% the recovery of waste packaging,
23% of it coming from municipal waste systems". Until May 2001, SPV recovered 59.000
tons of waste. That quantity increased by 29.9% for the same period in the year 2002.
"Quercus accusations are far away from being true", Garcia said.
"Instead of helping our organization on developing information campaigns,
Quercus is misinforming the end consumer," he said, but added: "our organization will
reach all the recovery and recycling targets set for the year 2005".
QUERCUS: http://64.176.7.196/ Phone: +21 381 5930 Lisbon;
Ministry of the Environment: maot.gov.pt
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