Incineration through procrastination

Everything alive is biodegradable. Everything we eat is biodegradable. It is an almost unstoppable natural process. The whole business becomes complicated when civilisation buts in.

Left to themselves, plants rot and provide humus for the next generation. Since we cultivate them and transport them far from their roots, the process is interrupted. We also concentrate them in large quantities in the wrong places. Rather than humus-in-the-making they become waste, a problem.

It is a false problem. In most cases it should be no problem at all. Anybody with a small garden can very easily compost organic waste and turn garbage into a resource for the garden. It is nothing technologically baffling. It is not even smelly. It happens almost completely on its own. All one needs is a compost bin and a few tips on management.

If we were all at it, or all of us who have a square metre to spare somewhere, Malta could very easily exceed the 15,000-ton composting target which the government has set for the Sant'Antnin composting plant after its upgrade with €17 million of EU funding.

It would significantly reduce the tonnage of garbage travelling across the country in smelly trucks each day. If we had started on this years ago we would not now be debating the issue of how many hundreds of garbage trucks will be travelling each day to Marsascala.

We did not. Since 2001 the government has shut out stakeholders claiming that the matter was subject to commercial secrecy in view of the tender issued to solve all our problems. Before that the government did not want to think of it.

In the present debate it has been stated over and over again that experts in agriculture have been consulted and that the magical figure of 15,000 tons has been arrived at as the maximum amount of compost that Maltese agriculture can absorb annually. It is not written in the Bible. It is an expert's opinion. Other experts put the figure much, much higher.

There is a sneaking suspicion that the amount has been tailored to EU requirements, a minimum obligation to compost. Sant'Antnin may be a project to satisfy our new obligations rather than a part of a strategy tailored to Malta's needs. We could do much more than this, much better and much more easily.

If farmers were to be fully engaged in the process they could revive traditional practices and do their own composting. Some may do more than others. The best raw material is available to them as off-cuts from produce prepared for market and from off-cuts produced at the vegetable market. Perhaps the farmers' cooperative could organise the collection and transport of this uncontaminated raw material by farmers travelling to and returning from the central vegetable market at Ta' Qali at no extra transport cost, with no additional journey. It would involve people. It would necessitate no large amount of money all in one place. It is not attractive to some people in authority.

Biogas production is a wonderful idea. It is also very low technology. Chinese farmers have had their own biogas plants for ages. Manure and vegetable matter is stewed in a tank and the trapped emissions are used for space heating and cooking. Larger operations could generate electricity selling a surplus through the ubiquitous electricity grid. Every Maltese chicken farmer, every pig breeder and every dairy farmer could become self sufficient in energy and sell off a surplus to round off his accounts.

Unlike other forms of alternative energy, biogas can be switched on and off at will. It is not dependent on bright sunshine or high wind. If Enemalta could be persuaded to produce a purchase rate card with better prices for peak hours, farmers could time their energy production to peak demand hours and make a killing of another kind. This would involve hundreds of farmers making money for themselves and not a state monopoly snatching EU funding for itself. Too many people, no sacks of money all in one place, bad idea.

Since all these processes take place at source there are no additional transport costs. Farmers can use the residue as manure directly or sell it to their neighbours who would carry it away themselves as is done anyway.

It would not send hundreds of garbage trucks to the far end of the country. Nor would it necessitate the return journeys of leftovers to the landfill at Zwejra, miles away. There would be no transport to consumers of the 15,000 tons of compost which would reach maturity at the point of its intended use.

The quality of the compost produced in this way would necessarily be top notch since it would not be made from the grisly cocktail of unseparated municipal waste. Also, with current systems for waste separation at source fully optimised, municipal waste will continue to bear the burden of contamination which farm-produced organic waste does not.

In the past four years, since the drafting of a Solid Waste Management Strategy, the Greens have not been asked for their opinion or assistance in any way. For much of that time, during the tenure of three ministers for the environment, Greens have been hermetically excluded from participation in the follow-up to the SWMS. We were not invited to the national conference on sustainable development. The data available to us is that which appeared on ministerial websites at the framing of the SWMS and has since disappeared. Virtually all the deadlines set in the strategy have come and gone with little or no result. Now it is in the process of being revised. It has to be since we are late on everything.

We could have discussed the siting of the composting plant proposed for Sant'Antnin four years ago. We could have spent the past four years creating a powerful public awareness of our challenges. We could have targeted special sectors such as farmers to provide them with opportunities. We could have got off our hands and had a thought for matters other than elections.

We are still in time to change our attitude. Green matters require people participation, enthusiasm, not fear, in engaging a vast number of people in greening the country. We all want a better Malta. What we need is to be made aware of a plan, a vision, a framework in which a multitude of micro-projects can be inserted. We can all be made to feel that we are gaining on the mess that oppresses us; that we truly can transform this little place into the home of our dreams. It will not be brought about by imposition, because someone has legal authority to bully any community one chooses. It requires the investment of hearts and minds more than money or propaganda.

Greens are always willing to help. We are willing to take on the worst jobs, the ones no government wants to handle. Give us the tools and we will finish the job. Try the countryside clean up. All we need is the means to arrest a handful of miscreants, confiscate their vehicles and plaster their faces all over the media as the greatest threat to employment in the tourism sector. We are more than willing to give up any hope of electoral support from them and their families forever and ever. Our rivals can keep it.

Just do not ask the Greens to be silent while the whole process rolls inexorably towards incineration through procrastination. Exclusion, silence, secrecy and violent imposition all smell of a decision by default. Are we to be told that the system has satisfied EU minimum requirements but still does not address the challenge sufficiently, that public awareness and cooperation is too low to hope for success and that incineration is our only solution?

Everything not done since 2001 points in this direction. Are we to be told that the EU has approved Objective I funding for Lm80 million+ for an incinerator? That it is now or never because the time has run out and that if we do not instantly submit to the non-decision taken in 2001 the money will be lost? The politics of fear have no place in environmental politics. It is a long-term matter; it is essentially a people matter. It demands calm deliberation, full disclosure of all the available data and consensus, no surprises. We will only fail if we fail to be decent, honest and courageous.

Dr Vassallo is chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika - The Green Party.

www.alternattiva.org.mt