Is Malta rubbish on waste management or not?

Malta is nearly at the bottom of an EU scoreboard assessing the management of municipal waste, ranking 25th out of 27. Just pipping Bulgaria and Greece to the post, I read in a report from Brussels published in The Times (Malta).

It “has still not implemented a waste prevention programme, it had very high levels of land filling, low recycling levels and was yet to reach targets on biodegradable waste,” according to the EU study.

It failed in 13 of the study’s 18 criteria. It is still land filling 86.3 per cent of its total municipal waste and recycling only seven per cent, we were told. And “although efforts to improve were recognised, particularly compared to the situation before joining the European Union in 2004, it was being slow to meet EU standards”.

“Not so,” came the rebound from Malta's Resources Ministry. “The EU scoreboard which gave Malta low marks on waste management is two years old and does not reflect the current situation. Whereas up to 2010 some 85 per cent of waste was dumped in the landfill and 15 per cent was recycled, at present, some 57 per cent of waste went to landfill and 43 per cent was recycled,” it claimed.

So has Malta been updating its data with the EU? Is the Commission going to base its “roadmaps for the 10 worst-performing member states, including Malta,” on an outdated study?

“We are noticing many improvements in Malta and many projects are currently ongoing in order to dispose of municipal waste better. But despite this progress Malta is still way behind our average standards. Land filling was its biggest waste problem, even though the amount going into landfills was being reduced every year. Disposing of waste in landfills was the worst possible way of dealing with it,” The Times article quoted an EU official saying on Tuesday,

The Ministry had nothing to say about the waste prevention programme in its response. Now the first thing that springs to mind is: how on earth can one “prevent waste”? However, reducing it can certainly be done.

Malta has stopped plastic bags being given out at supermarkets, which has forced me to be creative on how to dispose of my domestic waste. But, since I am not au fait with what exactly waste prevention involves, I visited the EU’s environment page and discovered that it is “A key factor in any waste management strategy” and that it is all about reduction.

Basically, it is about reducing the amount of waste generated at source and reducing the hazardous content of that waste, which automatically simplifies its disposal. That indicated to me that it is the manufacturers of products, which could do something about packaging.

Since many products that we consume come from abroad, it is up to the EU to instigate legislation ensuring manufacturers toe the line all over Europe. That does not, however, absolve our country from ensuring our producers of packaged goods are reducing packaging and that any hazardous content is eliminated.

Yet, it is not only Malta that has made limited progress. “According to the Strategy, although waste prevention has been the paramount objective of both national and EU waste management policies for many years, limited progress has been made in transforming this objective into practical action.

“Neither the Community nor the national targets set in the past have been satisfactorily met. As a result, the Strategy concludes that prevention can only be achieved by influencing practical decisions taken at various stages of the life cycle: how a product is designed, manufactured, made available to the consumer and finally used,” said the EU Environment page on waste.

However, we in Malta can take heart that we shall top the table on waste management in the future. “Its work in the field will take it to the top of the EU league,” the Resources Ministry promised on Wednesday. But is that yet another pre electoral promise?

Article published in The Malta Independent on Sunday on 12 August 2012