Household waste management

It is hard not to support responsible sorting and management of waste. Having lived for over 20 years overseas, I am accustomed to taking it for granted and complying without question.

However, it is just as hard to feel confident that the local approach is being pro­perly planned; just as the newly launched plastic bottle return scheme is coming across as yet another scam to enrich the usual suspects, with scant consideration for the environment and total disregard to fairness (many people cannot access it).

With regard to household waste, the easiest thing is to deploy council ‘gestapo’ enforcers to target the weakest (house­holders) while the big fish (catering establishments/construction littering, etc.) as usual remain untouchable.

If this is a new environmental ‘consciousness’, the argument is further broadened to include fish farm pollution of our greatest asset (the sea/the tourism industry) and, again, construction spewing sewage into the sea. The list goes on.

It seems to me that, in order to get the public on board, such schemes need to be both practical as well as coherent and fair. In a place where most people live in apartments, most of which are in residential areas inconvenienced by catering establishments, for example, householders should get a daily garbage collection, just  like the commercial establishments all around them.

Our pavements are practically non-existent and easily cluttered.

The idea of having a ‘central’ garbage collection point is not one to look forward to.  Whose property will be the lucky designated neighbourhood rubbish dump in our congested, over-populated streets? Finally, the system of organic waste collection is a farce. These bags are beyond flimsy and a health hazard, especially in our long, hot summers; to say nothing of the pigeon invasion doing its bit, spewing food waste all over pavements.

In a country where enforcement is so tragically lacking across the board, the zeal towards household rubbish is almost something out of Monty Python.

Anna Micallef – Sliema