Facilities fined over $21 mln for pollution: Ministry

ANKARA

Following environmental inspections carried out by the Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change Ministry in the first nine months of this year, 3,165 facilities were fined over 385 million Turkish Liras ($21 million), while 285 of them were closed for polluting the environment.

Inspections of facilities are ongoing throughout the country to ensure the adequate protection of nature, the ministry said in a written statement.

With central environmental inspection teams and 81 provincial directorate personnel, the ministry applied criminal proceedings to enterprises violating the Environmental Law, while the activities of facilities that posed danger to the environment and human health were stopped.

Underlining that facilities that were polluting the environment were not tolerated, the ministry reported that the highest number of inspections in Türkiye’s history reached 57,022 in 2021.

This number reached over 49,000 in the first nine months of this year, and the facilities that were fined were located mostly in the capital Ankara, Istanbul, the northwestern provinces of Tekirdağ, Kocaeli and the Central Anatolian province of Konya.

The environmental inspections carried out with technological devices, the fines of over 208 million liras ($12 million) for land-based pollution and of almost 66 million liras ($3.5 million) for water pollution were given.

The enterprises polluting the soil were fined over 6 million liras ($322,900), while the ministry gave a fine of 290,500 liras ($15,633) for violations related to zero waste/bags.

Within the scope of the “Zero-Waste Project,” led by Turkish first lady Emine Erdoğan in a bid to reduce the volume of non-recyclable waste, the recycling rate in Türkiye increased from 13 percent to 27 percent, Environment Minister Murat Kurum said last month.