Javea Grapevine Issue 176 - LARGE FONT EDITION | Page 41

ners so that everyone
can sit and appreciate the natural beauty of the beach and
bay. La Marina Plaza
Massive fraud in
recycling of appliances The Consejo
de Estado (Spanish
Council of State - the
supreme consultative
council of the Spanish
Government),
has accused appliance manufacturers
of being involved in
a massive fraud over
the past decade.
Manufacturers are
obliged to charge a
fee of between 5-30
Euros to pay for the
recycling their old appliances,
(“polluter
pays” principle) but
the suspicion is that
the law has been ignored, the appliances
sent to scrap, or sold
to illegal scrap merchants who do not
have the facilities to
deal with toxic waste,

and the money used
for other investments.
It is estimated that two
thirds of the appliances end up as illegal
scrap. The result is
that Spain is near the
bottom of the European recycling league
(ahead only of Romania and Greece). In
2012, 3.3kg of electronic waste per inhabitant per year was
collected in Spain,
six times less than
the figure for Norway
(20kg). A “sting” operation carried out by
the consumer organisation tracked 16 appliances left at collection points - only four
completed their journey to approved recycling plants. There
are moves to identify
each appliance with
a registration number
so that its fate can
properly be tracked.
This will require monitoring by each autonomous community.

Valencia rejects private parking project
for the Port The Ministry of Infrastructure
has rejected a project
proposal by a Madrid company to set
up paid parking in La
Caleta in the Port during the peak summer
and easter weeks.
This rejection is based
on objections raised
by the Xàbia Town
Council which pointed out how this would
add to congestion in
the area, and reduce
the already limited
number of free parking spaces in the Port.
They also stated that
in view of the planned
re-organisation
of
the Port, the issue of
parking should be addressed in a comprehensive manner. Also
that the Port is not an
isolated entity, but a
part of urban area,
and any intervention
should take that into
account. From XAD