Euro MPs Spyros Danellis and Kriton Arsenis have filed a joint question with the European Committee in an effort to promote obligatory recycling and other measures dealing with re-using the packaging of foods and drinks served during sea, air and railway travel.

According to informed sources, the continuous growth of passenger transports in the last decades has not been followed by appropriate legislative regulations, like expanding the directives regarding packing materials used in the passenger travel.

Until today, the two legislators pointed out, recycling of refuse resulting from travelling is exclusively done on a voluntary basis.

“Unfortunately very few shipping, air and railway companies use any recycling programmes, while the number of Europeans who travelled in 2009 reached 1.5 billion passengers,” they said in a joint statement. “Taking into consideration the services that are offered to the passengers (food, drink, newspapers etc), we can surmise that huge quantities of litter are produced daily and annually.”

Mr. Danellis underlined that “passenger transports in the European Union create exceptionally big quantities of litter daily. Not integrating the transports in the existing European regulations on recycling challenges the system.”