Hundreds of thousands of tons of toxic industrial waste is festering outside factories and in makeshift dumps across the country as authorities have failed to create the necessary facilities to process it and exporting the waste to countries that have the technology to do so is too costly.

Of the 330,000 tons of toxic waste produced by industries in Greece every year only 38 percent is processed while the remainder is stored or dumped, according to experts. Some 600,000 tons of this toxic refuse that has accumulated over the years is sitting in piles around the country – outside factories, on river banks and on forest land. Of all this no more than four percent is exported for processing as the expense is too great. “In order to transport it safely, and together with all the necessary procedures, it costs about 1,000 euros per ton,” Christos Vatseris, director of Intergeo, a Thessaloniki-based environmental services firm, told Kathimerini.

The manufacturers responsible for the bulk of Greece’s toxic waste are chiefly metal works, oil distilleries and producers of chemical products and fertilizers. According to the Technical Chamber of Greece around 80 percent of the total bulk of toxic refuse produced in Greece is produced by 20 large manufacturers.

The situation in Thessaloniki has been aggravated recently due to the saturation of the city’s main Tagarades landfill – which in any case is not supposed to accommodate toxic waste – and the restricted access to a new landfill in Mavrorachi, fiercely opposed by local residents.

The European Commission has indicted Greece to appear before the European Court of Justice for failing to create processing units for toxic waste.